Laura's England Adventure

Last Post from Newcastle Upon Tyne

2011-07-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Sorry I have been so horrible at writing entries!!! The last few weeks of Kids Kabin and Common Ground were really really busy. The last day of sessions at Kids Kabin, July 14th, we had a BBQ in the courtyard instead of activities. I made a bean bag toss, Abby did spin art, Melissa did balloon animals and there was a ping pong table set up along with all the picnic food. At the end Will said that we were leaving and lot of the kids came up and gave us hugs and said they would miss us which was really cute :) One of the cutest girls even gave us all a box of chocolates and an nice card! Right after the Kids Kabin BBQ ended Melissa and I went across the street for the Common Ground Summer Party - more food, conversation and laughs! While we were there several of the Kids Kabin staff went in town and we met them there for a drink after the Common Ground party was over. The Kids Kabin staff gave each of us a cute notebook that the kids had all written notes in, some chocolate, euros for our travels and a Geordie Dictionary!!! They are so nice!! It was a nice last night out but didn't last too long since everyone wanted to get their specific buses or metro home and most stop running around 11:30pm. On Friday Melissa and I took the smoothie bike to St. Vincent's for their school fair. We got to see a few of the Kids Kabin kids one last time including the one who had given us the card and chocolate.

Then I joined Melissa and 3 of her friends from college on a trip to Brussels and Barcelona. The weather in Brussels wasn't the best with rain most of the days we were there but it was a nice leg of the journey. The weather in Barcelona was AMAZING!! We only spent one morning on the beach but I could have spent all 4 days there! It was perfect! The sights were great there as well with favorites including the Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell.

I have been back since Saturday and on Sunday I participated in the Great Tyne Row. It was the first time it has happened and it was not a race but a fun row from Newburn (a ward of Newcastle were the Tyne Rowing Club) is located to Tynemouth - about 25 km. It was a lovely sunny day for it and I rowed for about 2/3 of the journey and was cox for the other 1/3. On Saturday and Sunday an painter painted my room and Melissa's room because when the windows were replaced and replastered around them the plaster was a different color than the walls. The rooms look really nice and fresh but it is strange not having all the pink and purple flowers on the walls in my room - it looks so bare!!

The past 2 days have been a frantic sorting, packing and cleaning ordeal! I also made it down to Tyne Rowing Club for one last row on the Tyne and had to go to Tynemouth to pick up the shirts I had accidently left there after the Great Tyne Row. This evening the sisters had us over for a pizza dinner and we ended up staying 3.5 hours because we were just talking and talking and talking! I have lots of things left to do in the morning when I get up and sadly several of the "for fun" things I wanted to do in the past month didn't happen :( The time just escaped me in the last month and lots of little things I wanted to do to further explore the area got pushed to the side! Such is life I guess!

As some of you know, I am not returning home just yet- instead I am traveling to Valensole, France to work on a small farm through the WWOOF program - world wide opportunities on organic farms. In exchange for working about 35 hrs a week I get a place to stay and food...so essentially voluntary work again. The family is a young couple with a 2 year old girl and they have vegetables, wheat, goats, other animals, fruit trees, etc. They make bread and cheese and sell that along with the vegetables at local markets. I will be there about a month and am excited to see what it will be like!

Sorry there aren't many pictures and I didn't expand much on the many things in this entry! I am in denail that I leave Newcastle in 16 hours!

2011-06-26T11:50:00.001-07:00

Last Friday Aimee and Lubo came over for dinner and a movie which was really fun! We watched “Yes Man” and another movie that I can’t remember the name of at the moment. We had planned on going to the Hoppings which is a fair that comes to Newcastle every year but the forecast had said about 80% chance of rain so we changed our plan to dinner and a movie instead of the fair. As it turns out it didn’t rain but we had a really nice evening anyway.

On Saturday Aimee came with Melissa, Abby and I on a walking retreat. It was in County Durham so not far away at all. Unfortunately the forecast was correct for Saturday and it poured during a good portion of the walking retreat. We soon learned that our backpacks were not waterproof at all and that the contents were pretty soggy! When we stopped for lunch it cleared up a little bit and from then on it just sprinkled or was windy which was actually nice because we dried out a lot by the time we got back to the retreat center where we were given tea and scones :) The day started and ended with a reflection. The theme was about being open to new ideas, new adventures, etc. which I think is a great theme and ties into our year in England very well although the rain made it harder for me to reflect during the walk and I ended up thinking about my wet feet instead- oops. One line of the song we listened to was “open to Yes” which made us all giggle inside because we had just watched “Yes Man” the night before and in the movie the main character is told to say yes to everything.

On Sunday Brother Ralph took us to Causey Arch which is just outside Gateshead. It is the oldest surviving railway bridge and was used to transport coal to the Tyne River. There is also the Tanfield Railway right by the bridge which is a heritage railway that runs for 3 miles from Sunniside to Tanfield. We didn’t take a ride on the train but saw it go by several times. We took a walk in the woods near the arch and railway and saw the River Burn that runs under Causey Arch. It was a fun afternoon out with Ralph!

This past week flew! We had extra school groups come in on Monday and Friday which helped the time go faster! I have really enjoyed working with the various school groups throughout the year and this coming week will be the last week we have any school groups in. Since I applied for and got a grant to buy ingredients for the cookery sessions I’ve been running with the school groups I am in the process of filling out an evaluation for. I asked the teachers to send me some feedback from their students and their opinion of how the sessions went, etc. I got some back this past week and it was fun to read the comments the kids wrote and all their creative spellings for words like spaghetti (spogety, spegety), sausage(sosuge, sosed, sosaged), pizza (pezer, pizzer) and even my name (Lorer, Lora)!

Yesterday I decided to go to Tynemouth one last time (might get another chance to go but I’m not sure). The sky was looking a little iffy but I put my rain jacket in my bag and went. The weather was beautiful when I got there- upper 60s with a warm breeze! There were tons of people out and about and I’m not surprised because it was finally feeling like summer! Melissa had found out from a friend that lives in Whitley Bay that there are some cool caves in Cullercoats that we had not seen so I made it my goal to walk up to Cullercoats and see some caves. I’m not sure what I was expecting but they were a lot smaller than I imagined but they were fun to see anyway. I sat on the beach and read for a little while and kept an eye on the darkening clouds coming my direction. Luckily the clouds never produced any rain and I headed back when my stomach started grumbling. There were several groups BBQ-ing on the beach and it smelled amazing! We decided that fish and chips sounded like a good dinner and went to Mr. Gee’s just down the road and got fish and chips for £2.20, yum yum!!! I think I’ll have to do that one more time before leaving since it is really tasty and not very expensive.

Today we went to mass at 11 am at the Chaplaincy and then all went in different directions. I wandered around town before going to the Great North Museum which opened at 2 pm. I walked through Eldon Square and wandered into a few stores before stopping at Tesco for a pasta salad to eat for lunch and decided to go down to the Quayside to eat it. Each Sunday there is a market down on the Quayside so it was pretty busy but a much better place to have lunch than the middle of a busy shopping street. There was a zip line across the Tyne today as well so it was fun watching that take place and people screaming as they went down the zip line. I’m pretty sure you had to sign up in advance to do it and even if you didn’t a skirt probably wouldn’t have been the best thing to wear while flying across the Tyne!

I have 3 weeks left of working at Kids Kabin and Common Ground and they are going to fly by! Yikes! I am also going to participate in the Great Tyne Row on July 24th so I will either be traveling with Melissa or Abby (both have friends coming over to travel for 2 weeks before going home) between finishing working or hanging around the area and taking day trips to places nearby that I didn’t get a chance to visit. I am working on setting up something to do in France (WWOOF or workway) for a few weeks after the Great Tyne Row and will let you all know when I have it figured out….I am way behind on this and stressing out about it since it has not been as easy to organize as I had hoped and there is a chance it will not happen and if that is the case I will be home the end of July instead of the end of August.

I hope you are having a great summer! I look forward to catching up with everyone when I return!

The Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Mix Up

2011-06-18T14:55:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday after Kids Kabin I went to the grocery store as I normally do on Wednesday evenings. When I got back Melissa and Abby had already eaten (we make our own dinner on Wednesdays - every other day of the week one of us cooks dinner for all three) and told me there was some pasta left on the stove and Sun Dried Tomato Pesto in the fridge. I was super excited because I was starving and it sounded really tasty! So I took a jar of "Sun Dried Tomato Pesto" out of the fridge, put some pasta in a bowl and put two nice big scoops of "pesto" on it and heated it up. I got myself a cup of water and sat down in the living room to enjoy some tv with my dinner. I took a nice big bite of the pasta and to my surprise found my mouth was on fire! I was shocked! How could Sun Dried Tomato Pesto be hot?!? As I quickly drank all my water I realized that the last time Melissa got some of Bruce's Hot Sauce it was in a Sun Dried Tomato Pesto jar (as you can see from the picture the two jars look pretty darn similar and even the colors of their contents look very very similar)! And he said this was the hottest batch he had made (Bruce works at Kids Kabin with us)! Yikes! After eating a banana to cool the fire in my mouth I told Abby and Melissa what I had just done and they practically fell off their chairs they were laughing so hard! I have to admit, it was pretty funny! Even though I do not like wasting food there was no way I was going to eat that bowl of pasta and I made myself a new bowl of pasta - this time I actually put Sun Dried Tomato Pesto on it and it was very tasty!

Melissa and I have been struggling the last few weeks since the sun rises at 4:30 am and our really nice new windows do not have any blinds! We were going to buy some blinds and put them up but Sr. Sylvia said they would buy them for us but would have to get approval from the London office that handles the money for home repairs, etc. However, the lady was on holiday and then Sylvia was going on holiday for two weeks so it would take awhile to get the approval. After a few weeks of waking up way way too early only to toss and turn until my alarm went off I came up with the idea of cutting cardboard to fit into my window frame. So Monday night I had a half hour battle with two big pieces of cardboard and transformed my room into the "Laura Cave" as Abby now calls it. The great thing is I can take the cardboard out in the morning and put it back when I go to bed so that it is still light in my room during the day. I had tried taping things over the windows before but it didn't work well and then I wouldn't take it down and have a darker room all day or it would fall down half way through the night and I would have to use more tape to put it back. It is amazing how much of a difference the cardboard makes and honestly the cardboard is probably better than any blinds we would find! Now I can sleep past 5:30 am with not problems at all! In fact, it is pretty much completely dark even at 8:30 am when I normally get up :)

2011-06-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

http://community.newcastle.gov.uk/libraries/2011/06/09/a-snapshot-of-the-geordie-language/

In September I had no idea what alreet, scran, why-aye, toon, tatties or divvent meant but I'm glad to report that I have come a long way in understanding Geordie! I still hear words each week that I don't know and an article that Newcastle Library put together proves that I still don't know a lot of Geordie words! According to the article:

"The top 20 Geordie words as nominated by people from across the region were:

1 Gannin (Going)
2 Canny (Well, fine, very)
3 Clarts (Mud)
4 Hinny (Honey, sweetheart, friend)
5 Divvent (Do not)
6 Clarty (Muddy)
7 Hoy (Throw)
8 Nettie (Toilet)
9 Doon (Down)
10 Lass (Woman, girl, wife)
11 Hacky (Dirty)
12 Hadaway (Go away)
13 Hyem (Home)
14 Plodge (Wade)
15 Toon (Town)
16 Why-aye (Yes, I agree)
17 Alreet (Alright)
18 Claggy (Sticky)
19 Knaa (Know, no)
20 Marra (Workmate, a match/equal) "

It was interesting for me to read the list because some words that I hear all the time and think are great (ta, tah rah, scran, pet, cuppa, etc.) are not on the list but others I've never heard before are on the list. Then again, some of the words I like are probably just be ordinary British words and not specifically Geordie. I'm sure I will miss the Geordie accent a bit when I go home and it will be interesting to see if any words automatically come out when I get home resulting in funny looks for people having to ask me what I'm mean.

2011-06-13T11:40:00.001-07:00

This weekend I was busy busy busy cleaning my room. I spent 4+ hours on Saturday cleaning my carpet. First I used the normal vacuum and then the special heavy duty carpet vacuum we borrowed from Brother Ralph. Since there was so much soot stuck in my carpet it took ages to clean and even after 4+ hours spent vacuuming my small room the water was still black! It was hard to tell if it was working sometimes but the end result confirmed that it was working! My carpet does look a lot nicer although I know it could still use some work. Today was spent washing my walls since there was still a lot of soot on them. Again that took ages but it is really nice now that it is done! It feels really nice to finally have everything cleaned from the soot disaster! I rearranged my room when I put all the furniture back but I’m not sure it will stay in this arrangement or not. I’ve wanted to rearrange my room for awhile but it may take another rearrangement or two to get the best configuration.

Below are picture of before and after pictures as well as a picture of the water from the vacuum (sorry the "after" picture turned on its own and I can't figure out how to rotate it in blogger). As you can tell from the after picture it isn't totally clean but it is a lot better. I think I might vacuum again with the carpet/steam cleaner next weekend to get it even better.

The weather this weekend has been pretty crummy-rainy all weekend! However most of the country is experiencing a drought so I know it is definitely needed!

Saturday was a leaving mass and celebration for the priest at the Chaplaincy where we go to church whenever possible. It was a nice mass followed by lots of yummy food! Sunday was the leavers’ mass for the Chaplaincy and we were considered leavers’ even though we are not students. All the leavers’ were given the book “How to Survive the Rest of Your Life” which sounds useful and it was written by a priest in the Hexham and Newcastle diocese which is cool. The mass was followed by a BBQ and as they say “all you have to do is plan a BBQ in England and you are guaranteed rain”! Despite the rain it was still a nice BBQ and a nice way to wind down the weekend. The Chaplaincy has been a very nice place to go since the population there is about our age, we could relate to the messages in the homilies so much more than at St. Anthony’s and everyone is super friendly! Luckily there will still be Sunday morning mass at the Chaplaincy until the Sunday after we leave! We were worried for a moment that it was the last mass but it wasn’t!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

2011-06-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Sorry it has been sooooo long since I wrote a blog post. I actually have several half finished blog entries in word documents that may or may not eventually end up here. The past 2 months have been very busy – including lots of traveling! Here is what I’ve been up to:

I never mentioned the great soot/dust disaster of 2011 so I suppose it should be mentioned as it caused a lot of frustration and extra work for me. It happened on Tuesday April 12th. We were told about an hour ahead of time that people were coming to replace the windows in my room, Melissa’s room and the window in the upstairs closet. My windows were leaky so they did need to be replaced and they had been looked at but had not been told when they would be replaced. It was tricky because the flat we live in is owned by the sisters’ but the flat below us in Council Housing so there is some rule about the Council actually owning the frame on the house and therefore responsible for the roof/windows in the roof so we had to wait for the Council to send people to fix them instead of hiring a private contractor to do the job. When we found out they were coming I was on my way out the door to go to Common Ground but decided I would take everything off my desk and dresser so it wouldn’t get dusty and boy am I glad I did! I was expecting a mess when I got back that evening but nothing close to how extremely dirty it was! It was so disgusting! Every surface was covered in a think black dust/soot type powder!! There was even dust and plaster chucks between my bed sheets! Everything under my bed was covered as well and some dust also made it into my closet! There were apparently tarps over my bed and other parts of my room but I have a hard time believing that! I spent hours that evening cleaning my room (with Abby’s help) and even though it wasn’t close to being clean we decided to stop for the day. I spent the next few days sleeping in the living room while the dust finished settling and it could be cleaned enough that my feet didn’t turn black when I walk in my room. I have yet to use a deep cleaning vacuum to get the carpets really clean and the walls need to be washed.

The Easter Holidays were 2 full weeks plus a Bank Holiday Monday so Melissa, Abby and I took advantage of this time off to do some traveling. I went and visited a good friend, Michelle, in France before meeting up with the others in Rome for Easter. From there I went to visit another friend, Emeline, in Pienza while the others went to Naples. I met back up with them in Florence and from there we went to Venice. It was a fantastic trip filled with lots of great food, wonderful sights and lots of laughs! I plan on writing a separate entry about this trip.

Once we got back to Newcastle I had a very busy week and a half before Mom, Dad and Patrick arrived to travel around the UK for just over 2 weeks. I met them at the airport in Edinburgh where we visited for a few days before heading down to Newcastle. It was great to be able to show them around the area as well as Kids Kabin and Common Ground – now when I talk about these places they will know what I’m talking about which is great! We also went to Durham, Tynemouth, Bath, London and Canterbury. It was great to get to spend 2 weeks with my family! Again, this really deserves a separate entry.
This past week was another half term so the kids had school off and Kids Kabin ran some camping trips. I went on one of the camping trips and we went up to Rupert’s Wood (I went to Rupert’s Wood once before in February to help with some projects). We took a group of the young volunteers (kids over 12 who come to training once a week and then can help run sessions at Kids Kabin) and for the most part it went well. The girls were more problematic than the boys but that was definitely expected! They couldn’t seem to keep their rubbish in their bags or put it in the rubbish bag and didn’t want to help with the community project we were doing at Rupert’s Wood. Even though there attitudes could have been better they did really enjoy running around the woods, playing in the pond catching tadpoles and just being kids. The boys were very focused the entire time because they were making a fort to sleep in and were in heaven being outdoors. Their fort turned out very nice and they actually slept in it overnight! When we were getting ready to leave the next morning they all begged to stay another night so I know they enjoyed themselves which is good! It was a pretty quick trip as we left around noon on Tuesday and got back at 1 pm on Wednesday but I think it is better to have it a little shorter and have them wanted it to be longer instead of it being too long and getting bored at the campsite which would lead to them causing problems and fighting with each other.

Thursday was a particularly quiet day at Common Ground and my guess is that everyone was out enjoying the beautiful weather! Many people come to Common Ground on days when they don’t need any help with their case just to socialize and have somewhere to go but being such a nice day I’m guessing they took advantage of it spent the day outside.

Today was a staff training day at Kids Kabin. We started out with almost 3 hours of spring cleaning (even though it is June) which was really good to do and then had about 4 hours of a meeting to discuss various topics.

I can’t believe how extremely fast the time is going! I have 6 weeks left and there is still so much I want to do! I need to come up with some goals for the time I have left and just make sure I get the most out of my remaining time here.

Happy April!!

2011-04-03T05:08:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I read a reading at Mass which was a first for me! I walked to the chaplaincy because it was a very nice day and I had been inside all day so the hour long walk was very nice! I left extra time to get there since I didn’t want to be late and ended up getting there earlier than normal. Apparently Father Downey asks people to do readings, bring the gifts to the altar, etc before mass starts so whoever gets there first gets asked. Luckily the atmosphere is relaxed and there are only about 40-50 people there which was perfect for me.

Not much new happened this week except for starting street sessions. Everyone has 2 evenings a week that they do street sessions, mine are Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday we brought the mobile cooker and bike repairs out to “monument” which is a small monument in a neighborhood not far from Kids Kabin. We made lots of pancakes and fixed some bikes. About 30 kids showed up and took part in the activities over the hour and a half we were there. On Thursday we brought the smoothie bike (a bike powered blender) and sports equipment. We were on Hexham Ave which is just a block and a half away from Kids Kabin and not as busy of an area so we only had about 15 kids show up. I really enjoyed both evenings and think that the street sessions will be highlights of my week in the next few weeks! It is so fun being outside and engaging with new kids (and some who regularly come to Kids Kabin as well)! I will try to remember my camera next week so that I can get some pictures.

Melissa and I have been helping two of staff/apprentices at Kids Kabin with their college work (we each do one day a week for one hour). In the UK college does not mean you will earn a undergraduate degree like it does in the US. There are several different options and I know they will receive a certificate when they are done but most of the work is done at home (they don’t attend classes) and an advisor comes to see how they are doing every two weeks or so. Neither enjoyed school much and did not do further education after high school. For one of guys, it is like pulling teeth to get him to even work on it for half an hour. The other has a better attention span and easier time coming up with idea but since he is in his upper 30s and doesn’t own a computer, it takes him ages to type it all up (uses hunt and peck typing). It has been an eye opening experience working with them on their school work. They are both really good at the hands on stuff they do at Kids Kabin on a daily basis but put them in a school setting and they struggle.

This past week during art sessions, lots of Mother’s Day cards and gifts were made because Mother’s Day is today, Sunday March 3rd, in the UK (or Mothering Sunday as my calendar says)! I had seen Mother’s Day gifts and cards in stores several weeks ago and I was really surprised that everything was out already until I realized UK Mother’s Day is a month before the US Mother’s Day. Happy UK Mother’s Day!!

I started volunteering at a community centre called “The Meadows” three weeks ago. I am helping in their environmental project called “Terra Nostra”. They have a rain water recovery system, wind turbine, solar panels and geothermal energy. The first week I helped look for more funding that could be used to get another more powerful wind turbine. Last week I helped with a school group that came in to work in the garden and learn about the other projects going on. On Friday I calculated water flow rates from the different water tanks and used that info to set up a timing system for the leaky hose they are going to put in the garden beds and figured out the spacing and length of the hose needed in each set of beds. I am only able to go once a week for 4-5 hours but so far it has been interesting.

I’ve been wanting to get a haircut for awhile now but kept forgetting to make an appointment at a place about a 10 minute walk from our flat that Abby went to a few months ago because she said they did a good job and it was a good price. Since I had no plans today I decided to go into town and get a haircut at a place I had seen in Eldon Square that advertised haircuts for a little cheaper that the one down the street. I went and got in pretty quit which was nice. The service was ok and the stylist wasn’t the most pleasant I’ve had but I figured for £13.95 it was ok. However when I was told the price it was £19.95 not £13.95 like I was expecting! I was shocked! Apparently they charge by length of hair and mine was pretty long so it was “level 4”! Since that bit of important information was not listed on the website or anywhere in the shop that I saw, I wrote a nice customer complaint on their website! At least the haircut itself is pretty much what I wanted and I got a nice walk into town and back from town…I even took off my jacket on the walk home because I was too warm…so nice! I am really enjoying this 50s weather and being able to walk to more places instead of always taking the bus. Below is a picture of the haircut...not a great picture but the best I could do taking it myself (see last post to compair length).

This morning I ate a “muffin” with peanut butter for breakfast….this “muffin” is what we would normally call an “English muffin”. I couldn’t help but chuckle inside when I bought them at the grocery store yesterday. I feel like there have been a couple other such occurrences but I can’t think of them right now. Two things continually annoy me about England or at least the North East of England since I'm not sure if it is true for other parts of the country or not. One is the amount people smoke! Not at Kids Kabin because none of the staff smoke but at Common Ground and The Meadows it seems like people are constantly going out for a “tab”. Also, just walking around Byker or in town you will walk through at least a couple clouds of cigarette smoke. Yuck!!! Another really annoying socially acceptable behavior is littering. There is way more trash on the ground than there should be and it is not uncommon to see someone throw a bottle or wrapper on the ground when they have finished eating or drinking the contents. Unbelievable!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend!

Happy Spring!!!

2011-03-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe that another week has flown by!

Last Friday I helped plant trees at a tree planting event. The first part was boring-a lot of watching and not much doing as important people, like the Mayor, took pictures while “planting” the first few trees with the various groups that attended to help out. I say “planting” because the holes were already dug and the tree was put in the hole for them…all that was left to do was to throw some dirt on it and smile. I went with a group called SCAN (through Newcastle University -the group I went with to Rupert’s Wood) and by the end of the day we were basically the only people left planting trees. Once all the promotion type stuff got out of the way and we could actually dig holes and do some work it was a nice day! I think 31 trees were planted in total and more were going to be planted on Saturday.

On Saturday Melissa, Abby and I went up to Holy Island (where we went in September for a retreat) to help do a big spring cleaning on the camp that is used over some of the school holidays and during the summer for Catholic summer camps. Sr. Josepha, who is the head teacher at one of the local primary schools (the one Abby works at), was in charge and she is amazing! Always full of energy and so caring! Luckily she is so nice and never seems to be in a bad mood because she had to rescue the mini bus we were riding in twice because we ran out of petrol! Since there were a bunch of people coming to help out they rented a 15 person mini bus and one of the guys drove it. He has driven before for Sr. Josepha so it wasn’t just a random person. Anyway, we were probably 20-30 minutes away from Holy Island when we ran out the first time and Sr. Josepha, who was already on Holy Island, came to the rescue! We had a lovely day for being there and in typical English fashion we had many tea/coffee breaks throughout the day so even though we were there working/cleaning for about 7 hours it didn’t seem like that much at all! Also, one of the girls who also goes to mass each week at the chaplaincy, where we go, came along to help out and it was really nice getting to know her better. It was a lovely day out of Walker and more than one person asked the driver when we were getting in the mini bus to go back if he was sure we had enough petrol…he responded confidently “yes”. However, just past Morpeth (about 14 miles away) we ran out of petrol again! I didn’t have anywhere to go and found it pretty funny but at the same time completely ridiculous! The driver just really wasn’t using common sense at all! If £15 of petrol didn’t get us to Holy Island, why would you think £15 of petrol would get us back to Newcastle?

The weather this week has been fabulous! In the 50s with sun most day :) I could get used to this type of weather! Luckily it doesn’t look like we will be having any more random snowstorms/snow days like in MN (although I was a bit sad that it really only snow for one week here)! The weather was great again for rowing yesterday. I went out in a single and although I didn’t think I was doing that great the coach said I was doing well so I guess that is good. I was happy that I got the jacket I ordered :)

The kids at Kids Kabin all seemed pretty chill and happier than normal this week and I’m thinking the weather had something to do with it! I can only hope that the weather stays nice! There are lots of flowers sprouting all over the place which I find nice! We got a new logo for Kids Kabin this year and today we got some signs to attach to all the trailers we will take with us for the street sessions starting next week. We are also getting hoodies so there are going to be Kids Kabin logos galore!

In other interesting news we are getting our shower redone next week and it is currently out of commission. After spending the day at Holy Island and cleaning for several hours, we all took showers on Saturday evening only for our downstairs neighbors to tell us that they had water coming into their bathroom from our bathroom and that it had actually been happening all week but it was really bad tonight! Uh oh! The plumber came and looked at it and found some problems with the way the shower was installed-he thinks it must have been a do it yourself installation that wasn't done correctly. Luckily we have a bathtub to use otherwise it would have been a long week and a half without a shower!

That is about all I have for this week! Sorry I didn't have many pictures for this post. Have a great weekend!
Laura

2011-03-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday March 17th, 2011

So 2 months later I have definitely dropped the ball on blogging! Sorry everyone! I guess I was just caught up in life here and honestly the time has been flying by so I didn’t realize it had been soooooo long since I had written. With only 4 months until I am done, I just don’t know where the time as gone!

Today is St. Patrick’s day and it does not appear to be a big deal at all here in England. Hardly anyone was wearing green today (besides Melissa, Abby and I that is)! None of the kids mentioned it during sessions either which is a big clue to me that is really isn’t celebrated here. I did see one guy where a big green St. Patrick’s Day hat but that was it. I made green cupcakes to celebrate and Abby ate two already so I take that as a good sign!

Let’s see, what has happened in the last 2 months? Probably a lot but most of it just seems like day to day stuff. Here are some things I have done/thoughts on the last few months:

-We went on a trip to Paris and Athens. This requires another post so look for that in a few days.

-I have been continuing to row once a week and the weather has cooperated so we have been able to go on the water the last few weeks which has been great! I have been in a single (it was a training single so it had extra stabilizers and would have been hard to tip), a quad and next week if the weather is nice I will be going out in a double. I still feel like I am all over the place but slowly improving.

-Common Ground continues to be interesting and a constant reminder of how incredibly lucky I am!! Today a lady got a message from her son via facebook for the first time since leaving her country I believe and was in tears because she was so happy to finally get news that he was ok. The donations have definitely slowed down and the food donations are few and far between. The asylum seekers who are destitute- meaning they get no housing and no money from the government -are given £10 a week and a bag of food depending on what we have. When I got here in September all the food drawers were commonly about half full and at times overflowing (the food is kept in 4 big filing cabinets). Now most of them are empty…last week all there was to give out was a bag of rice and a tin of tomatoes….normally there is tea bags, oil, sugar, pasta, rice, vegetables, soup, tomatoes, bean, fruit, tinned meat and toiletries. It is really hard to tell them there really isn’t much we can give them. Most say “it is ok” and are appreciative for what they do get. To me it doesn’t really seem ok because I know they don’t have much money to buy other food! I have noticed that the prices have gone up since we have gotten here. Some things have really gone up in price while other things have gone up by only a few cents. I’m not sure what has caused the prices to increase but they have!

-At Kids Kabin we are gearing up to start street sessions in a week and a half. I think it will still be a little chilly out but we will see! Yesterday Abby and I learned all about using the portable kitchen/stove by wheeling it around the Kids Kabin courtyard, unloading and reloading it onto the trailer, and making some bacon! Next week involves prepping for other activities and getting supplies and checklists together so we can easily get out for street sessions soon after the junior sessions end. Should be fun! There have been quite a few new kids coming to Kids Kabin over the past few weeks and it has been fun having new kids around who are super excited about everything. We continue to do sessions with local primary schools and they are generally really good! In comparison to the after school junior sessions, the school sessions have about twice as many kids in each activity and they go better. This is probably because they kids think of it as “school” and there is a teacher there as well. I run the cooking sessions when they come in and it never ceases to surprise me when they are all more than willing to do the dishes and clean up! That is something that rarely happens during the normal junior sessions.

-One thing that I think is really good about the schools here is that there are a lot more primary (elementary) schools and most of the kids walk to school either with parents, friends or siblings. Most of the schools have only one or two classes of each grade but I like that they are more local and the kids are able to walk or bike to school daily….no need for school buses and long bus rides! The kids who come to Kids Kabin go to mainly 5 primary schools that are all easily accessible by foot or bike from Kids Kabin. There are fewer high schools than primary schools so I have seen a fair amount of high school students taking the bus or metro to school but since there are already good public transport systems it works out well.

-Ash Wednesday was last week and I think it was the first time I have had people ask me what the “dirt” or “black spot” on my forehead was for. Two of the other staff/volunteers at Kids Kabin asked why Melissa, Abby and I all had “black spots” on our foreheads and Melissa got asked a lot when working at Common Ground and one person actually asked her if she could wipe it off (she didn’t of course!). It was interesting feeling like a bit of a “minority” for the day as I didn’t see many other people with crosses on their foreheads. Many of the kids at Kids Kabin knew about it because some of the go to two of the local Catholic primary schools but some of them had questions as well.

-Tomorrow, March 18, is red nose day. Basically it is a day of fundraisers for various charities in the UK and Africa. The fundraisers are supposed to be fun/funny and there are special TV programs the BBC as well. (www.rednoseday.com/about)

That's about it for now. I will do my best to get a post about my trip up soon and post on a more regular basis as well!

Laura

Welcome to Kids Kabin!

2011-01-24T15:19:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,

I finally got around to taking pictures of Kids Kabin...since I spend so much time there I figured you might want to see what it looks like.

Here is Kids Kabin from the outside. It was closed when I took the picture...the big blue shutter is where the doors are.

This is the art room. The red and white thing you see in the picture is a puppet theater trailer. This is the kitchen. I help run cookery sessions a couple times a week. Today I worked with Sr. Jill and we made some gluten free recipes since Sr. Jill has celiac disease/gulten allergy.

This is one of the hallways...got to love the bright yellow doors!

The computer room-not used for much right now but we are working on getting an animation type activity up and running soon.

The pottery room-Abby spends a lot of time in here and runs pottery sessions a couple times a week. Since she was an art major she actually has experience with pottery and using the wheel!

This is the woodwork room.This is the sewing room. It is kind of a mess right now since it isn't used very often. All the staff/volunteers were given rooms last week to organize and I have the sewing room so it will look a lot nicer in a week or so!This is looking out from right in front of Kids Kabin. At the bottom of the big apartment building is Common Ground.

This is the Churchwalk Shopping Centre (to the left as you walk out of Kids Kabin)-a post office, grocery store, betting shop, drug store/pharmacy, 2 convenience stores and Greggs.

2011-01-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

Above are some pictures I took today at the Tyne Rowing Club (the building, the Tyne River and a old boat planter box on the path to the club) where I have been rowing off and on since early November. On Wednesday mornings there is a learn to row course and that is what I have been going to. In November and December there were some other people who came but lately it has been just me and the coach. It has been great for learning (I can't complain about a 2 hour lesson for £2) but I hope other people start coming again because part of the reason I started rowing here was to meet more people. The other reasons were to learn more about rowing because I started last year at CSB/SJU and wanted to do it again and just to stay active. I haven't been on the water since before Christmas but let me tell you, it was tricky changing from rowing with one oar to rowing with two oars! They start everyone off here rowing with two oars where as at CSB/SJU everyone starts rowing with one oar. Hopefully it will be nice enough next Wednesday to actually go out and row instead of just having land practice on the ergs.

There is another rowing club in Tynemouth that I went to twice but the times at this one seem to work better for me. Also, they row on the sea and really only get to row during the summer months. I hope to row there some when in the summer/spring! They have evening practices and once it is spring time hopefully the water will be calmer and it will be light late enough as well! Tynemouth is a cool little city and it would be awesome to row on the sea.

It was Abby's Birthday on Monday so we had a little celebration at Kids Kabin and then had a nice dinner at home. I forgot to put toothpicks in the cake before putting tin foil over it so the letters got messed up a little bit :( Abby decided she wanted steak and potatoes for dinner so Melissa and I made steak, cheddar bacon mashed potatoes, grilled peppers and onions, spinach and a mushroom sauce. It was so good!! Of course, you can't have a cooking adventure with out the fire alarm going off. When we were cooking the steak/searing it on the stove the fire alarm went off but according to the websites Melissa and I read to learn about cooking steak it was pretty much gaurenteed it would happen. After some fanning and cross ventilation (opening the back door and front window), we were good to go and didn't have anymore fire alarm problems. Melissa's birthday isn't until May so they are nice and spread out over our 11 months here.

"When will my reflection show who I am inside"

2011-01-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I've been meaning to take pictures of Kids Kabin for awhile now and I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me! It is my goal for this coming week to remember my camera and take pictures since I realized I haven't done that. Here is one picture of Melissa, Abby and I outside Kids Kabin that was taken in November.

Kids Kabin is such a great resource! There are lots of rooms with endless possibilities and I love the little projects we do! Here is an example I made for a project this past week. I found the idea in one of the many craft idea books in the art room. I think it is pretty cute!

Woodwork is the activity where the most practical items are made. For example, lot of tables, chairs and bird boxes are made each week by the kids. When it snowed a lot before Christmas, sledges (aka sleds) were being made everyday. I thought that was pretty cool! They all just came and asked to make sledges! Last week I finished the spice rack I had been working on for a while and although it isn't perfect, I like it and can't wait to hang it on the wall and use it! I have found that woodwork is a lot more fun than I thought it would be and I hope to learn more about it and get better at it.

Melissa, Abby and I watched Mulan last night (we got a VCR and I found some cheap VHSs last week - about $.15 each)! We had a great time singing alone to "I'll Make a Man Out of You" and other favorites. The song "Reflection" stood out to me even though it isn't one of the songs I normally like as much as others in Mulan. In this song, one of the lines is "When will my reflection show who I am inside" and I felt like this was perfect for me right now and says how I am feeling. For a while now I have felt that I am often not the person I truly want to be even though I'm not sure exactly who that person is. It is hard to explain and probably why the line in the song hit home for me because it says what I want to say. I want others to see the person I know I am inside, or want to be (even though I'm still figuring out exactly who that is), and I know that that doesn't happen all the time. Not that I should care much about how other people see me but that I want to act truly myself and not hold back at all. So I know that it will take a lot of thinking and searching to figure out how to make some changes and make sure that "my reflections show who I am inside" but it is now a goal I have for this year.

I also think it ties in really well with an experience I had at Common Ground on Tuesday. I was helping someone apply for a crisis loan. The process for doing this consisted of waiting on hold while listening to the same 1 minute clip of Vivaldi’s Spring for about 30 minutes on repeat and the message "Thank you for your patience, we will take your call as soon as we can but all our lines are currently busy. You may want to call back later" or something like that, finally getting through only to get cut off, calling back and waiting just as long if not longer to get through and finally going through all the application questions and getting the loan. The client I was working with is smart (has a college degree in his our country) and we chatted while on hold. He was clearly very frustrated with the system and annoyed with all the hoops you have to jump through to get a crisis loan in order to buy food and hygiene supplies. The loan gives him money that is supposed to last for a week and if he needs more money next week he will have to do the same thing all over again. During our chatting he begged me to never let my family become refugees because it is awful. He wants a job and wants to be off the system as much as possible. Somethings he said where along the lines of how people look at him differently when he uses his food card at the stores or when out and about in general because he is not white and speaks with an accent. “When will my reflection show who I am inside” really fits for him as well. He is tired of having skills, knowledge and ideas yet being treated differently and not being able to provide for himself the way he knows he should be able to.

Well, that is about if for today. We are having a lazy weekend which has become a trend here and I am ok with that! January is flying by and I can't believe it is already half over!

Prague

2011-01-09T13:07:00.001-08:00

Prague trip: December 19-23

Prague, or Praha, is the first place we visited where English is not an official language. It wasn’t really a problem because like in other tourist cities many people spoke English and most restaurants had English menus as an option. It was nice but also made me feel bad just waltzing into the country with no knowledge of their language and expecting to be accommodated. I am spoiled being an English speaker and being able to go all over without having to learn other languages. I know if we went to smaller cities, we would run into situations where the language difference was a problem but so far all the places we plan to go are big enough tourist cities that people will speak English.

(Sunday) Our trip to Prague was uneventful and we found our hostel easily. We had booked a 3 person room since it was pretty much the same price as a room with more beds a different hostel we were looking at. Turns out we were given a 4 person bedroom with a kitchen! Fabulous! We didn’t cook any meals since we wanted to try the food the Czech Republic has to offer but we did use the fridge for breakfast and sandwich ingredients. By the time we got to our hostel it was about 5 pm and we were all hungry! So we dropped our stuff in our room and went in search of dinner.

We found a nice place to eat and all ordered from the traditional Czech section on the menu. I got schnitzel style pork and potato salad, Abby had beef goulash with dumplings and Melissa had a roast duck with potatoes. They were all yummy and we left feeling satisfied. The potato salad I had was not the American style potato salad; instead it had a vinegar type dressing which I thought was better! We went to Tesco after dinner to get breakfast food and lunch food for the next day. Only during the breakfast the next day did we realize that the “milk” we bought wasn’t normal milk. I can’t remember the translation we found online but it definitely wasn’t what you would want to put on your cereal in the morning. I think that was our only language problem of the trip and the next day we made sure to buy the right kind of milk. Before heading back to the hostel we wandered over to the Charles Bridge and walked over it and back taking in the bridge and the castle lit up at night.
(Monday) On our second day, as seems to be our norm these days, we went on a Sandeman’s tour on Prague. We met in the Old Town Square and we got there early and looked around the Christmas market. So many fun things and yummy food! The tour of Prague was very informative and interesting…and cold! It is one thing to be walking around a city when it is cold and another to walk and stop for long periods of time for about 3 hours. The lunch stop in the middle was much needed and although we all brought sandwiches with us, we opted to buy something warm to eat and the soup bagel combo at Bohemia Bagel was exactly what we needed! Warm and yummy! One interesting thing we learned on this tour was about a poor man who walked into the Church of St. James and saw jewels around the neck of a statue of Mary, he decided to take them. Surprisingly the statue grabbed hold of his arm and would not let go! When he was found the next day by a monk or priest and he could not get the man’s hand free, he cut it off and hung it in the entrance of the church to warn all other thieves. It has been hanging there for 400+ years!
After the tour we walked up to Prague Castle. It isn’t a castle we would normally picture but more a collection of buildings that surround St. Vitus Cathedral. I really liked St. Vitus Cathedral! It is so pretty! The stained glass windows were amazing as well. We didn’t go all the way into the St. Vitus, just as far as you could go without a ticket. You had to buy a ticket for the Castle in order to go all the way into St. Vitus and we weren’t interested in the rest of the Castle so it would have been a pretty steep price to pay to maybe spend half an hour walking through the rest of the church. What we did see was great! We wandered around the castle grounds (which are free), watched the changing of the guard (they are much less serious looking than the guards at Buckingham Palace!) and went back to our hostel for a few minutes before dinner. We found a restaurant pretty close to our hostel. It has cool lamps hanging from the ceiling made out of old bottles. Abby and I had pizza and Melissa had gnocchi which I had never heard of before. I tried a bite and it was pretty yummy. My pizza was good and I decided I would eat all of it instead of bringing leftovers to our hostel because I don’t think pizza is nearly as good when it is reheated (Abby took some of hers to the hostel). I eat slow normally and Melissa and Abby eat fast….so needless to say it took me probably 45 minutes longer to finish my meal than they did! I was just chugging along and enjoying my meal but also couldn’t help but laugh a little bit at the situation. Since it is winter, it gets dark early!! There really isn’t a lot to do when it is dark and cold so we went back to the hostel to read or maybe play a card game. We weren’t in the hostel too long when the power went out for some reason or another…it was only out for about 1.5 hours so it wasn’t a big deal but not much reading or card playing happened. Oh well, more sleep is always good!

(Tuesday) Our tour guide on the Sandeman tour suggested that we get tickets to a performance or show while in Prague if we had some time. Our first order of business was to find a show to go to either that evening or the next day. We were really excited when we found out the Nutcracker was sold out but understandably so since it was showing that night and the next night. We ended up getting tickets for the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Christmas Concert for the following night.

Then we wandered around Wenceslas Square and its Christmas market. Next we went to the Pinkas Synagogue and the cemetery. It is a memorial to all those from the Bohemia region lost during the holocaust. One of the exhibits has drawing that children did while in Terezin, a transit camp. The cemetery next to the Synagogue is incredible. I’ve never seen so many headstones in my life! And it is several layers deep since it was a ghetto area and they didn’t have anywhere to go but up. After this we walked up Petrin hill and saw the Petrin Tower, a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower built two years after the real on was built in Paris. We got some nice views of the city on our hike up the hill. After we climbed the hill we headed out in search of Strahov Monastic Brewery. Melissa had read about it and it sounded like an interesting place to have dinner. It was a bit off the beaten track and Abby doubted we were going to right direction for most of the walk to the Brewery but we did find it! One of the previous AMAs visited Prague and said that rabbit is a traditional food so I decided to try rabbit for my meal and it was pretty tasty. Along with some dumplings and a beer, I felt like it was a very Czech meal.
(Wednesday) The next morning/early afternoon was spent at the zoo. It was a big zoo but sadly most of the animals were in their winter indoor housing. We still got to see all the animals (except we never found the giraffe) and probably closer than if they were outside but it would have been nice if they were outside. The polar bears and the elephants were pretty funny. One of the polar bears kept banging on the door to their enclosure…we think s/he was hungry and that it was probably the door used to give them food. The elephants kept bobbing their heads like they were dancing to some silent music. One of our other favorite animals was a house cat that followed us around for awhile...can you tell we all miss our pets? When we finished up at the zoo we got lunch at Wenceslas Square Christmas market and headed on a wild goose chase for the Jewish quarter. The pass we had got us entry to many different places and was valid for two days but we didn’t have much time and we got turned around, oh well. We spent the evening doing some shopping in the Christmas Markets before having dinner and going to the concert. It was a nice concert and although it was a Christmas concert they didn’t play anything Christmasy.
(Thursday) We got up early on our last day to see the sunrise from the Charles Bridge, sadly it was completely overcast and we didn’t see anything. Melissa and I then went on a crazy hunt for a post office to buy a few stamps and mail some postcards. We had a map from the hostel and the post offices were marked on the map…sounded easy enough. The post office must have moved because we looked exactly where the map said it should be but didn’t find one. We asked a new paper stand where to find a post office but and we didn’t find that one either. We ended up finding a convenience store that sold stamps. By the time we got back to the hostel it was time to pack up and head to the airport. The flight ended up being delayed about an hour and a half but that was ok since we weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere.

A few random things:

We couldn't leave with out trying Trdlo...a yummy treat that was being made at several stands in all the Christmas markets:

"The Dancing House"

Above: People buying carp to eat for Christmas dinner.

Below: a building I thought looked like bubble wrap.

London Trip

2011-01-05T16:09:00.001-08:00

With our extra time off from Kids Kabin we decided to take trips to Prague and London. I was the only one who had never been to London so everything was new for me! We spent December 29-January 2 in London.

We got into London a little after noon and made our way to the Sisters place in Kensington. First we got Oyster Cards that allow us to get discounts on all the transport systems in London. For example, if you were to buy a single ticket from Kings Cross Station to the High Street Kensington tube stop would cost £4 but only costs £1.80 with the Oyster card. We got settled into our nice rooms in the newly renovated building at the convent and then headed out to go to the Natural History Museum.

The building the museum is in is really pretty and ornate. Surprisingly there was a long line to get into the museum. Luckily it moved fairly quickly. We stayed in the museum until it closed at 6 pm looking at many cool exhibits including dinosaurs and a slice of a giant sequoia tree from California. We went to Tesco and bought food to make a meal back at the convent. The building we were staying in has mostly offices, guest rooms so it isn’t used often in the evening and there is an extra kitchen that we were able to use which was great! We were able to save some money by cooking dinner a couple times while we were there.

On our second day, we decided to take a walking tour of London. But our first order of business was going to TKTS to get theatre tickets! We ended up getting tickets for STOMP. Then we headed over to where the tour started.We got there a few minutes early so we wandered through Winter Wonderland which was a sort of Christmas market and amusement park combo. I had every intention of returning to look at what was being sold but ran out of time. The tour company, Sandemans, gives free walking tours in many big cities in Europe and we have been on their tours in Prague, Dublin and Edinburgh and they have been informative and fun so we decided to do the one in London as well. Since the sights are spread out more in London we did not see as many places and there was less meat to the walk in general. It was not a waste of time but definitely not as good as the other ones we have been on. After the tour we walked around and I got to see more of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye before heading over to the National Gallery for some art. One great thing about London is that there are lots of free museums!! It is fabulous! Abby really enjoyed all the museums since she is the art person of the three of us. I enjoyed them as well but not nearly as much as Abby since in most museums she saw several pieces she has studied in school or at least read about. After the museum we found a place to eat dinner before heading over to the theatre for STOMP. I didn’t know much about STOMP before going except that is was a group using various items to make noises. Well, I thought it was AMAZING!!! I was smiling pretty much the entire time!! So much fun! The theatre was small as well so we had great seat (I don’t think there would have been any bad seats in the theatre). It was a great way to end the first full day in London.
On New Year’s Eve, Heather, another AMA in the south of England came up and joined us for the day. We went to the British Museum in the morning and got to see lots of neat stuff there. It was cool to see the Rosetta Stone but there were lots of other pieces that I found most interesting like all the hieroglyphics! It was a very large museum and we didn’t make it through everything before our stomachs were growling. We took a lunch break and then headed over to the Tate Modern. It took a long time to get there because we wanted to walk but that was fine. There were some cool pieces in the museum but I have a lot harder time understanding and appreciating modern art than most other forms of art. The big exhibit at the moment is:
It is lots and lots of hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds. This one was hard for me to understand.
After that we rushed over to Westminster Abbey for the Evensong service. Melissa has a trick of seeing churches by going to a short service instead of paying the entrance fee. You don’t see everything you would see if you pay the entrance fee but you do get to chance to admire the architecture and the church itself.

We debated for a long time about what to do New Year’s Eve. Even at 5:30 and before people were lining up along the river to get a good view of the fireworks and we heard that by 7:30 many of the viewing areas would be full and closed off. Standing around for 4+ hours to see 7 minutes of fireworks did not sound like much fun to us. Then we would have had to wait a long time to get out and back to where we were staying since there would be so many people trying to get on the tube or just walking in the streets as well. So we looked online and found that there was a park that had great views of the city and some people suggested going there to watch the fireworks instead. We got up there only to realize that the park was HUGE and we had no idea where to find a good view of the city or what direction we even needed to be looking! Luckily we found a bunch of people all waiting on this hill and they were indeed waiting for the fireworks. Well, turns out we probably should have keep looking for a different “outstanding view” point as they were called on the map because all we saw of the fireworks was a glow behind trees. Bummer. The fireworks are shot pretty low I think for a good display right behind the monuments and for the TV viewing so not many went high in the sky. We saw a good amount of other fireworks down the river being shot off by random people but it wasn’t the display I was expecting. Oh well, at least we had easy un-crowded tube rides. To get to the place we were staying at we would go through Heythrop college because they are right next door and have a 24 hour door man and it would lead us right to a door to the convent and through that door was where we were staying. However, said door was locked and so began the adventures of trying to get into our rooms. There are lots of keys at this desk and the door man gave us several to try since he wasn’t sure which convent door was which. We were hopeful but turns out none of them worked. So he suggested we call the sisters and even though we didn’t want to wake them up at 2 am we figured it was ok since we were locked out. No one answered the phone and he tried all the phone numbers he had for various sisters. So he called a coworker and we tried calling the volunteer coordinator whose office was in the building we were staying in hoping one would have some useful information but neither answered. Kindly the doorman offered to open up a student lounge with sofas for us to sleep on until morning. Around 5:30 am he came down saying the person who came for the next shift knew the right key so they would let us in! We were super happy and sleepily left our coaches…it was chilly so we were happy to go back to our warm rooms! However, that key didn’t work either. I think part of the problem is that they renovated the building and likely changed the locks on all the doors and forgot to give new keys to the doorman. So instead of putting us back in the student lounge he opened up the guest house where we stayed the one night upon arriving in London on Sept. 2. This was nicer than the student lounge but he only let us into one room that had 2 beds and there were 4 of us and it still wasn’t that warm. We stayed there until about 8 am when we knew for sure the sisters would be up and if the door was still locked we would be able to reach them on the phone and get let in! Luckily it was open and we went to bed for another 2 hours, this time in warm and cozy rooms! I have never slept in 3 different places within half a block of each other in one night before so that was definitely a first!
Since we didn’t sleep great we took it easy in the morning and started our day later than we normally would. We wanted to see another show so Abby went to get Wicked tickets and Melissa and I went to get Lion King tickets before meeting back up to watch the New Year’s Day parade. It was fun watching the parade and we actually watched it for longer than we had originally planned. We then went back to the Tate Modern because we had run out of time to finish it the day before. After we were done we went over to the Globe Theatre which was about a 2 minute walk. We watched the Winter Wassail performance which was pretty good-my favorite part was a rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas”, it was hilarious! Just because we hadn’t seen enough shows we split up and I went to Lion King with Melissa while Abby went to Wicked. The set and costumes for Lion King were AWESOME! The opening scene when all the animals come out was so cool!!!!!!! Sadly, the singing left a bit to be desired and when you are used to singing along to great songs in the Disney movie it was disappointing for the music part not to be up to snuff. Melissa and I had standing tickets because all the rest of the tickets were sold out they let a certain number of people stand along the back for cheap. They were not bad “seats” by any means and we especially liked the small price tag…kind of made up for the failed singing. I’m still glad we went but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping.
By our last day we were all thoroughly exhausted from walking around so much. We each had different things we wanted to see and do for our last day so we all went separate ways after breakfast. I had not seen the Tower Bridge or the Tower of London and wanted to see those. Unfortunately, the two tube lines that would take me directly from High Street Kensington to Tower Hill were having maintenance work done so getting there took several tube line switches and about half an hour of walking. Needless to say, that took a lot longer than I was expecting. I didn’t think I would be interested in going into the Tower of London since I have been in several castles already but after seeing it, I think it would be cool to go inside! After seeing the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge and walked the half hour back to the tube and took it to a market area in search of a birthday present for Abby….I didn’t end up finding what I wanted. Oh well. By that point it was time to go back and through the last few things in my bag before going to the train station and catching the train back to Newcastle.

All in all it was a good trip and I definitely have the itch to see more shows! However, I have never been to such crowded museums in my life! It was probably a combination of it being New Years and that they were all free but it was insane how busy most of them were!

Christmas in Newcastle

2011-01-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

Sadly there was no public transportation of any form after 6 pm Christmas Eve and none on Christmas Day either. This meant we were unable to go into town and go to the Chaplaincy for mass and instead had to go across the street to St. Anthony’s. It is really convenient but there are a lot of things we don’t like about it, one being the music as I have mentioned before. When there are no other options, it will do.

We had a very untraditional dinner of mac and cheese on Christmas Eve. Since all three of our families have different traditions for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we did a little bit of everyone’s. My family opens gifts on Christmas Eve so Abby and Melissa opened the gifts I gave them and I opened the presents from my family. On Christmas Day the rest of the gifts were opened since that is when Abby and Melissa’s families open gifts. We then went to the brothers and sisters house for Christmas dinner. The dinner started out with an interesting appetizer that consisted of half an avocado scooped out and put back in mixed with prawns and a sauce. It was pretty tasty even though I normally don’t like prawns. The main meal was turkey, mini sausages wrapped in bacon, cooked carrots, mashed potatoes, parsnips and brussel sprouts. It was all very tasty. The Christmas pudding is a fruit cake type dessert that is heated up in the oven, some alcohol is poured on top and then it is lit on fire…or in our case it just smoked instead of actually lighting on fire. To go with the Christmas pudding there was brandy cream, brandy sauce and some other form of dairy mixed with brandy…haha. I wasn’t a big fan but the English really like it! When our meal was done we watched the Queen’s message on the TV at 3pm. It was about a 10 minute message from the Queen and it started out with the song “God Save the Queen” playing which made me giggle because it is the same tune as “My Country Tis of Thee”. Also, a fun part of the dinner was the Christmas Crackers. It was fun seeing everyone wearing paper hats! We finished the evening back at our flat by attempting to watch the Santa Claus on the VCR I got for our apartment but it didn’t work! (I brought it back to the shop and after a fuse was replaced it works great)

I got to talk to everyone at Gram Super's house for Christmas so that was great! I was also surprised with a call from Grandma and Grandpa Buggy, Uncle Tim and Declan since Uncle Tim was helping them get Skype set up! I'm so glad I got to talk to everyone on Christmas!!

How many American’s does it take to change a light bulb?

2010-12-13T14:56:00.000-08:00

Apparently more than 3!

Sometime last week the light bulb in Melissa’s room burnt out. She got the ladder out of the closet and tried to change the light bulb…but she couldn’t get it unscrewed. So she asked me to try and I couldn’t get it either. Abby didn’t have any luck either. So Melissa asked Ralph if he would come over and help us with our light bulb to which he replied “Oh, don’t you know the light bulbs are different than in the US”…we figured he was joking with us/making fun of the fact that we couldn’t change a light bulb…but he was being serious! Apparently some of the light bulbs here look like:

Our attempts to unscrew the light bulb failed because it couldn't be unscrewed. So to change these light bulbs you have to push up and then twist a little bit and it pops right out. Who would have guessed that there were different kinds of light bulbs?! Not me!

Geordie 101

2010-12-12T16:27:00.001-08:00

The dialect in Newcastle/the north east of England is called Geordie. It took getting used to! The first few weeks I had no clue what half the words coming out the kids mouths were! Here is a list of some of the words I have heard often since I have been here.

aye=yes
a’reet=alright, alright is used as a greeting and it doesn’t mean “are you ok?” or like I would normally think of when someone asked if I was alright, it is like our “Hi, how are you?”
cuppa=a cup of tea (many cuppas are consumed in a day! 3 is my max but I've seen people drink more than that!)
deeks=look at
doon=down
gob=mouth
hadaway=get away
hoy= to throw
hoos=house
lend=borrow
nowt=nothing
oot=out
ower=over
pet= a term of endearment used for both genders
ta=thank you
tab=cigarette
toon=town
us=me (this one confused me a lot at first!)
whey aye=yes
wor=our

Another difference I have noticed is with spelling. When the kids gather before sessions we make a list of their names. Sometimes I don't know all the last names so I ask what their last name is and how to spell it. This is problematic because instead of saying the letter names they say the letter sounds and at a rapid fire speed! Normally they end up writing it down because I just can't catch it even if they say it 2 or 3 times!

Some common names, at least with the kids, are Chloe, James, Aidan, Liam, and Jack.

Playing catch up

2010-12-12T14:46:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday November 24 the snow adventures in Newcastle started! A few days earlier I was told that normally they don’t see snow until January in Newcastle so I was a little bummed that it wouldn’t snow for another month. Little did I know that a snow storm was about to hit Newcastle! It proceeded to snow for 6 days! Not constantly but off and on each day! I loved it but boy did it cause problems! Even when it snows, the snow doesn’t normally stick around very long, or so I’m told so almost a week of snowing just isn’t normal.
Thursday November 25 was the first day that there was actually a bunch of snow on the ground and apparently it is tradition that after the first snowfall there is a big snowball fight before the session…and there definitely was! Lot of snowballs flying at me and somehow one ended up in the pocket of the vest I was wearing. Not exactly something I normally do on Thanksgiving but to everyone here it was just another day.
On Friday, November 26, evening I baked my first batch of Christmas cookies, sugar cookie cut outs with frosting. I kept some for us to eat but the main reason for making them was to sell at the Common Ground Christmas fair taking place on Saturday. Sadly when I went to help set up for the fair there was a sign on the door saying that the Christmas fair had been cancelled due to the weather. I was a bit disappointed because I had spent time making the cookies and I could have been doing something else but at least we got to eat more this way! I went back to the flat and we headed out to do the shopping for the Thanksgiving dinner we were cooking for the Kids Kabin staff, the other volunteers on the west side of Newcastle and the sisters and brothers….in total about 20 people. So needless to say that was the biggest craziest shopping trip ever!! Wow! First of all it was just super expensive and the amount of food we had to bring back was incredible as well (a massive turkey, and ingredients for stuffing, corn, green beans casserole, rolls, spinach, cornbread muffins, pumpkin pie, apple pie, ice cream, jello, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes). Times like this make you appreciate having a car and just piling all the groceries in the trunk! Since we had already gotten a bus pass to go grocery shopping, we went into town to see the Christmas market and maybe get some Christmas shopping done as well. The Christmas market was neat but not nearly as big as the one in Cannes. Also, when we walked into Primark they looked like they were closing up even though they were supposed to be open for another hour and a half…we were told that the buses were stopping early so the stores were closing early. Darn! Snow just changes everything here! We also gained a leak in the living room ceiling…but luckily Sr. Sylvia stopped by 20 minutes after we noticed it because she was bringing us a cool advent candle that has 1 to 24 listed on it and you are supposed to burn down one number each night. So we were able to tell her about the leak and she is going to have someone come over to look at it.
On Sunday November 28 we didn’t go into town for Mass at the chaplaincy like we normally do because we didn’t want to get stuck in town if the buses stopped early again…they ended up running as normal but there was no way to guarantee they wouldn’t stop early like they did the night before. We like going to the chaplaincy instead of mass at St. Anthony’s across the street for many reasons but will go to St. Anthony’s from time to time. The music is MUCH better at the chaplaincy! At St. Anthony’s the song lyrics are projected onto the wall behind the altar and the music is played off of a recording and half of it sounds like elevator music! Also, we don’t agree with most of the messages in the homily at St. Anthony’s…the priest has very conservative old school views on many things and we can relate to the messages at the chaplaincy! Abby made the pumpkin pies and I made the apple pie on Sunday as well.

Monday November 29: Melissa and I brought all our Thanksgiving day feast supplies over to

Kids Kabin in the morning and put the turkey in the oven only to have Will (project manager of Kids Kabin) call us half an hour later to say that he couldn’t make it in because the road were so bad and he didn’t want the other staff to struggle to get it either and that Kids Kabin would be closed and the dinner rescheduled for Thursday! We weren’t happy! We had to cook the turkey either way because we couldn’t refreeze it and it would keep much better in the fridge if it was cooked. So we spent 6 hours in Kids Kabin with the turkey. When Abby came after her morning working at a primary school, Melissa and I took a break from manning the turkey and went to the woodwork room to work on making a spice rack for our kitchen since we had been meaning to make one for a long time.

Tuesday November 30: In the morning I went to Common Ground but I am told I missed all the fun back at the flat! An inspector came from the council with Sr. Sylvia to look at the leak in our ceiling. Right before they came the gutter fell off the back of our flat and was blocking the door. So Melissa or Abby went through the back gate and moved it so the back door could open. And then Sr. Sylvia almost went sliding down all the steps in the back when she went out with the inspector guy to look at the gutter situation as well. Yikes!

Wednesday December 1: Even though it was snowy I decided to go to rowing because the coach said if it was snowy we would just have an indoor workout which was fine with me. I take 2 buses to get to rowing. I had to wait for the second bus for 40 minutes (normally it comes every 10 minutes) and was frozen but the time it finally came. I got to the rowing club 30 minutes late to find it was closed and there weren’t even any tire tracks in the snow or footprints on the steps! So annoying! So I turned around and went back into town and spent the morning wandering around town instead. It wasn’t waste of a morning by any means but disappointing when you expect to do something and then you can’t. The sisters had a going away party for one of the volunteers on the other side of Newcastle which was nice but sad because Jannice was really nice and I would have like to get to know her better. Also, Flan came! Flannery is another AMA volunteer but she is in Cork Ireland for the year and she came to visit us!

Thursday December 2 was our rescheduled Thanksgiving celebration! Not nearly as many people were able to come but it was still yummy! I went in to Kids Kabin early so I could put together the cookie turkeys before heading over to Common Ground. I had already made my pie and put the jelly (what we call jello) in the fridge the night before so all I had to do after Common Ground was make the green bean casserole. I missed an epic turkey carving and lots of other fun preparations while I was at Common Ground. The cookie turkeys were a big hit and it was fun to see some reactions to the various food. There weren’t too many complaints but one guy had never had spinach and after one bit he made a green bean fort around the spinach on his plate so it wouldn’t contaminate the other food. Haha! The only other complaint was another guy said there was a spice in the pumpkin pie that reminded him of bad childhood memories, interesting. Otherwise everyone enjoyed the meal and Sister Jill was pleased with her gluten free mini apple and pumpkin pies we made her. We had a lot of leftovers because for some reason or another even though we knew several people were not coming we still made the same amount of food we had originally planned on making. After a busy day and all the work on getting the meal ready it was nice to come home and relax and chat! We got to hear about Flannery’s experiences so far and we watched “Love Actually” as well.
Friday December 3: We got the day off! The school group that normally comes in around 1 cancelled because they didn’t have school because “the weather was too bad”. This was nice because then we were able to take our time showing Flannery around Newcastle and we were able to just stay downtown instead of going into town, back to Kids Kabin and then back to town for dinner out. On our trip in town we walked by Fenwick's Christmas window. They have Christmas music playing and a north pole themed window display. Pretty fun! We finished off the night with SET, Bananagrams and another movie. I was excited that Flan knew how to plan SET and wanted to play because I had wanted to play since putting it in my suitcase! It was a ton of fun having someone visit!!!
Saturday December 4: We put up our Christmas tree! It is the first fake tree I’ve had but it was super easy and no one has to water it every day or so and there won’t be any needles to clean up. This being said, I still prefer a real tree! I just don’t have a clue where you would get one around here and I like that the fake tree was free (aka in our storage closet upstairs)! It is also weird having a tree with so many of the same ornaments! There was a box of silver snowflakes and a box of gold balls and 3 random ornaments….not like our tree at home at all! We all have our own collection of ornaments and there are not many plain colored balls found on our tree! I am planning on making a few new ornaments for our tree.

This past week was just a normal week. Since it was so snowy lately there have been very few donations coming into Common Ground and the food drawers are almost all empty! I felt bad when I was giving out the food this week because half the drawers were empty and then sometimes they didn’t want what was in the drawers that did have some food in them (No oil, sugar, tea, coffee, pasta, rice, tomatoes, fruit, soup…some toiletries, vegetables, meat and baked beans). I really hope this week brings some donations!

It has been really interesting listening to everyone talk about the snow and cold weather! It seems completely normal to me but it is so out of the ordinary for this time of year in Newcastle! We got a decent amount of snow (6-8 inches??) but it was over 5 days so this would be no big deal in MN but when there aren’t many plows and people are not used to the snow it causes major problems! People on benefits were getting “cold payments” to help pay for the extra heating costs because it had been cold for a certain number of days. I wouldn’t have guessed that “cold payments” existed but I guess they do! On the bright side, it created fun woodwork projects: sleds (or sledges as the English call them)! Also, many kids were being pulled around on sledges instead of being pushed in their usual strollers since the sidewalks were covered in snow…it was super cute!

Sadly over the last two days the temperatures have returned to normal for this time of year and almost all the snow has melted! It is so strange seeing grass! It seems like I fast forwarded to March or April. I really hope it snows again before Christmas so we have a white Christmas! But if the weather is back to normal we might not see snow until January which I am told is when it normally starts snowing.

Wellies have been my lifesaver during the snow! They keep your feet nice a dry but do nothing to keep them warm! As of yesterday I have fleece wellie socks to put inside my wellies and they will help my feet stay warm.

Christmas cookie batch number 2 was made last night! I made peanut butter "kiss" cookies but used Cadbury Buttons instead. They are just as tasty! I think a second batch will be required since they are rapidly disappearing!

Ireland

2010-11-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

Abby and I went to Dublin and Belfast November 12-15. We were actually only there for two full days since we had a 9:30 pm flight Friday night and a 9:30 am flight Monday morning. It was a very quick trip, but a nice trip nonetheless. Br. Ralph drove us to the airport on Friday night and was his usual joking and random fact telling shelf on the ride to the airport. He is really nice and very helpful! He is always willing to come over and do any house repairs that we happen to need.
When we got to Dublin we successfully exchanged some Euro bills for coins and found the bus we wanted to get into town (the bus only accepts coins). We asked to get off at one stop but the bus was actually not stopping at that stop the bus driver told us we would only be about 2 blocks away which was fine with us. When we got off the bus the bus driver asked if we knew where we were going and then gave us directions! So nice! We had a map so we knew basically where we were going but it was really nice of him anyway. Since it was about 11:30 when we got to our hostel it was off to bed! We had to put the duvet covers on our duvets….and everyone else in the room was already asleep….it is interesting putting a duvet cover on in the dark!
Saturday morning we slept in a little but not a lot. We went out and walked around a bit and made our way over to St. Stephen’s Green. It is a lovely park with several ponds, a couple fountains and lots of trees. We took our time in the park and then headed over to the City Hall for our free walking tour of the city :) On the way, I was checking the map to make sure we were still heading the right direction and a lady asked if we needed any directions….we gladly took her directions and they were prefect! Another kind Irish person! Our walking tour was nice but we only stayed for the first half of it and ditched out when people split up for the coffee break because we were meeting Flannery, another AMA volunteer who is in Cork Ireland, in a few minutes. It just happened that she could take the bus up and meet us in Dublin which was great! We went to two museums, The National Gallery and The Archeology Museum (not the exact name). They were both interesting but I liked the Archeology Museum better. There was an exhibit called “Bog Bodies” that was really interesting. Basically it was a bunch of bodies that were found preserved to various degrees in bogs with facts about bogs and bog bodies. It was interesting and a topic I had never heard about before. After the two museums Flannery suggested a hot drink so we stopped at a coffee store chain called “Insomnia”. We were chatting and catching up in general when the lady at the table behind us interrupted our conversation to tell Flannery she should run a marathon (we were talking about running) and it turns out she was from Deephaven MN!!! Talk about small world! She was just on vacation with her husband. Crazy. Next we wandered down one of the main street admiring the Christmas/winter lights and the hustle and bustle of the pedestrian street. We walked with Flannery most of the way back to the bus stop and then headed to meet Elizabeth! We were all a bit hungry so we found a place for dinner, got caught up and then headed to a pub Elizabeth liked for a drink. It was a nice pub but sadly they weren’t playing traditional Irish music…just the radio. It was a nice way to end the day anyway.
On Sunday we went to Belfast. We had debated staying in Dublin, going to Belfast as planned or changing the plans completely and going to Galway. For a few reasons we decided to go to Belfast. On the bus ride there we entered an area of thick fog and it lasted a long time! I was bummed and was thinking we should have gone somewhere else or stayed in Dublin but magically about 10 minutes outside of Belfast it cleared up! Talk about perfect timing! As we walked towards the main streets from the bus station we heard some music. It turns out that it was a Remembrance Day ceremony taking place at the City Hall (which is MUCH cooler looking than the Dublin City Hall). Remembrance Day is like Memorial Day in the US and it was neat to see part of this ceremony. On the bus ride to Belfast, Elizabeth had mentioned that the British song “God Save the Queen” has the same tune as “America the Beautiful” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN9EC3Gy6Nk). They played this song at the end of the ceremony and it was so strange to hear such a patriotic American song played in Northern Ireland with a completely different meaning. We took a bus tour of Belfast that took us to many interesting sites and told us some history of the city as well which was really helpful for Abby and me! We got off at Queen’s University and went to the museum there. It was a great museum and they had an exhibit about the troubles which I really liked because I had not taken the time to look up much information about the troubles before going to Belfast. There was a lot of science stuff in the museum too which I of course loved! We walked around a bit more and had dinner before heading back to Dublin. Abby and I went to the pub on the corner of the street our hostel was on for a drink and to listen to music since they had live music playing. It was great! The perfect way to end our first trip to Ireland (we are definitely going to plan a return trip to Ireland).

While one day in each city was not enough, I‘m still glad I got to see both cities.

This past Saturday (November 20), Melissa and I helped wrap presents for the Common Ground Christmas party. Sadly, it is on the same night as Kids Kabin dinner out and I’m not sure which I will attend since I would like to go to both.

We are going to have our Thanksgiving celebration next Monday November 29. We are inviting all the Kids Kabin volunteers and staff, the brothers and sisters and the other volunteers on the west side of Newcastle so we should have a pretty big group! I’m excited.

It rained all weekend and off and on all day today. There is precipitation of some sort in the forecast for the next week which is a bummer but there is snow in the forecast for Thursday – Sunday which I am excited about! I hope it actually does snow even if it doesn’t stick.

Half term trips and Alnwick Castle

2010-11-10T15:58:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago (Oct. 25-29) was half term, basically a week long break from school. During the half term breaks KK runs day trips and kids are invited to go on one of them based on their interests. I went on two of the trips, Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday it was the bike trip. Since it had rained a lot overnight the original plan had to be changed since it was so wet outside. So we biked to North Tyneside and went bowling! I was winning on my lane for the first 5 frames or so but ended up finishing in the middle. After the bowling alley, we continued on and biked to a park where the kids ran around for awhile. Then we continued on and rode through some pretty woods although the paths were really muddy and there were lots of puddles. Needless to say we all looked like we jumped in a mud puddle by the end of the bike ride! In total, I was told we biked about 13 miles which is a pretty good distance for 8-12 year olds (and 23 year olds)! Everyone was pretty tired by the end and some of the kids needed encouragement the last mile or two to keep pedaling. They kept saying “I’m knackered”! It was a tiring trip.

On Wednesday we went to a brick making factory in Gateshead. They had something like 8 million bricks on stock! Or maybe it was 800,000….anyway, it was a lot! It was pretty cool seeing how the bricks were made, the gigantic kiln they had and how the special shaped bricks were made. After lunch we had the chance to make a sculpture/mural that will be brought back to KK when it has been fired. It will be neat to see the finished project. Some of the kids were really cute and said some hilarious things on the trip, even the ones the normally give us trouble. It is always nice to see them in a different setting and catch a glimpse of their good side which we know exists. They were all proud of their work too!

Since I missed Common Ground on Tuesday I went on Monday instead because Melissa was unable to go on Monday like she normally does. Monday was great! Monday is the busiest day at Common Ground with a lot of people coming in for support, lots of donations coming in and lots of activity in general! I also went to Common Ground on Thursday like normal.

Since Abby and I had nothing to do on Friday we took the opportunity to go to Alnwick Castle (pronounced An-ick)! This castle is still lived in and St. Cloud State University actually has a study abroad program based there! I saw several signs that said “Private: St. Cloud State University”. It was a neat castle but what we were really excited about was the parts of the first and second Harry Potter movie were filmed there! I was super excited at one point when I walked through a gate and immediately recognized the area where they had their first flying lesson! We took a tour that told us where all the movie sights were :) That night when we went back to our flat we started watching the movie but only got about 20 minutes in before we were both asleep on the couch. I still need to finish watching to see all the places I recognize. We felt like total nerds but were also really excited about it! Sadly, there are 20 or so filming locations for each of the Harry Potter movies….so far we have been to 2. It was a nice way to spend a free day!

Last Week and this past weekend

2010-11-08T13:23:00.001-08:00

Wed. Nov. 3
This week was the start of our winter “street sessions”. Since it is too cold and gets dark so early, we will now be going to various community centers and doing activities there a couple days a week. Today we went to the Monkchester Community Center for the first time. I brought decoupage and Abby brought pottery. Brioni will normally bring some music and do a dance activity but she had been sick and wanted to take it easy tonight. Several of the kids got really into the decoupage so that was good. Every Wednesday a group of parents have a dinner and activities for the kids while they sit and chat so we are just bringing new and extra activities for them to do. Part of the room usually has a football game going on and the noise level was off the charts but besides that, I think this “street session” will normally go pretty well. There were a bunch of kids who normally go to KK there but also lots that don’t so it was a nice mix of familiar and new faces.

Thursday Nov. 4
Thursday was a normal day except for the fact that we started night sessions at Daisy Hill youth center. It is a nearby center that has activities for 13-19 year olds, so basically it is a KK for teens. Bruce, Melissa and I went and brought wood carving as an activity. Well, as Bruce said at the end “that went”….and that was all you really could say. These teens made many of the kids at KK who give us trouble look like saints! They were older and more out of control. Some of them were really well behaved and got on with the activity and did a nice job carving but several others were wild and ruined a lot of wood. When we left the lady in charge said they had to close for awhile because the behavior was so bad…I can see why. She also said that it would be closed for another month or so but they recently opened again because the board made them open again. It will be interesting to see how this goes in future weeks!

Friday Nov. 5
Today was the first day that we had a new school group come in. A class from this school will be coming for 6 Fridays to do “art club”. I don’t think there is as much art in primary schools here as in the US or at least that is what it seems like. So we will run 4 activities while they are there: art (Melissa), pottery (Abby), woodwork (Will) and cookery (Me). I think it went really well for everyone this week and hopefully it will each week! It is really nice when we work with school groups because everyone is normally well behaved and even eager to clean up which hardly ever happens during the afternoon sessions.

The more exciting part of the day was Bonfire Night in Walker Park. On November 5, 1605 13 people tried to blow up the House of Parliament by placing 36 barrels of gunpowder in the cellar. In the process of blowing up the House of Parliament the King would be killed. Their plan was foiled and Guy Fawkes was caught in the act, tortured and executed. Bonfires were lit that night to celebrate that the King was still alive. Now it has become a big holiday and each year bonfires are lit and there are fireworks to celebrate the Gunpowder plot being foiled.

Historically, a Guy Fawkes figure would be put on the top of the bonfire to burn but our bonfire had a dinosaur on the top....seems a little more appropriate than burning something that looks like a human. The bonfire was HUGE! But sadly it burned down pretty quickly but it was nice while it lasted.

We went to the local celebration in Walker Park and helped sell “glow sticks” although they weren’t what I would call glow sticks but battery powered spinning or flashing things. There were spinning hats, star wars type light sabers, light up spinning stars, etc. Each year the city council sells these “glow sticks” to help raise money for the firework display the next year which seems like a good idea to me! We saw many people we knew throughout the night from Kids Kabin and Common Ground.

Saturday November 6

Melissa and I had a very lazy day on Saturday....we didn't even leave the flat! Abby left early to visit a friend in Birmingham so she wasn't around. I slept in till almost noon which was amazing! Then I spent the rest of the day getting my wireless internet to work again, watching tv online and reading. When I finally wanted to go out and do something active it was going to be pitch black in an hour so that didn't really give me enough time to do anything without buying a bus pass so I decided to just stay in. It is nice having lazy days sometimes.

Sunday Novermber 7

Although it was nice having a lazy day on Saturday I was determined to get out of the flat before we left for church. I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, did some cleaning and then decided that since I would need a day bus pass to go to church anyway that I would go into town and take the bus over to Gateshead and check out the Metro Centre. The Metro Centre is a huge shopping mall so nothing really special but I have been meaning to go anyway just to see what it was like. It is huge!! I stayed in the shopping mall area but there are lots of other shops around it like an IKEA and Costco. I plan on going back and getting over to IKEA! When I went to add money to my phone in the Metro Centre, the guy who was helping me had actually been to Minnesota and Iowa! Apparently his wife is from the US and he has spent a good amount of time in the states. So we chatted for a few minutes and I mentioned that there were some things I missed from back home that I couldn't get here....and to that he said one thing he missed about the US was Taco Bell...haha! Not exactly what I had in mind! After the Metro Center, I wandered around Newcastle a little bit going to a few shops I wanted to go to and checking prices on a few items at different stores. I debated staying in town until church but decided that going home would be good since it gets dark really early and shops close earlier on Sundays.

Since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, all the stores are already in Christmas mode! It is crazy and I don't like it!! I know there is probably a lot of Christmas stuff out in stores in the US already but I'm a fan of taking it one holiday at a time.

Monday November 8

Last week the weather was actually pretty mild but this weekend the weather made the switch again and it is colder and windier again. Bummer. I was hoping the nicer weather would stick around for another week or two. I had planned on finding the bike path near our flat that you can take into town this morning but there was a 90% chance of rain, lots of wind and dark clouds covering the sky so my plan was foiled. Hopefully I will be able to find the bike path before it gets really cold!

Halloween

2010-11-08T05:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday Oct. 31
On Saturday we went on a pumpkin hunt and all found suitable pumpkins for carving although wandering up and down Shields Road looking at the selection the various produce stands had for sale does not compare to going to an apple orchard or pumpkin patch to find the perfect pumpkin! Even looking through the giant bins of pumpkins at Cub was more eventful than our frantic search for pumpkins. Oh well. We were very last minute shoppers for our pumpkins so we couldn’t really expect much. Also, we were looking for a pumpkin carving kit and never found one. We weren't sure how our kitchen knives would work but they ended up working just fine.

All our pumpkins - Melissa, Abby, Me

We all did various things in the morning, ignored one trick-or-treater at about 4:30 pm, went to church, ate dinner and carved pumpkins while watching “It’s the great pumpkin Charlie Brown”. We were not interrupted once by any other trick-or-treaters. We were told to avoid answering the door because the kids are not supposed to know where we live. It turned out not to be a problem, either there just weren’t many or they all came while we were at church. Since we have been going to church in town, the whole trip takes about 2 hours so there is a good chance the rest of the trick-or-treaters came while we were gone (between 6:15 and 8:15 pm). Halloween is growing into a bigger holiday here but it is nothing compared to Halloween in the US. We had a good time carving our pumpkins and put tea candles inside. By looking at our pumpkins you can totally tell that Abby is an artist and I am not! Her pumpkin design is many many times more complicated than mine! Melissa’s is more advanced as well. Mine was simple but that is fine with me. I had fun carving my pumpkin and since it was small, it was really easy to clean out! I hope you all had a fun Halloween!

Edinburgh!!

2010-10-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Friday Oct. 22
We decided to take a 3 day weekend and go to Edinburgh! The train ride only took about an hour and a half and we got into Edinburgh just before 11:00 am. Our hostel was just a short walk from the train station so we dropped off our bags and ate our bag lunches before going out to explore! We decided to get the Edinburgh Pass that was kind of expensive but then we could go to lots of places for "free". We went to the Edinburgh Dungeon which was kind of like a haunted house but with some history thrown in as well, the 3D Loch Ness experience (not as cool as we thought it would be), St. Giles Cathedral (free anyway), the Dean Gallery, an underground tour and a graveyard tour. St. Giles Cathedral was really pretty! It wasn’t huge but it had a really nice and ornate chapel in one corner. At the Dean Gallery, Abby saw many pieces of artwork that she had studied at school which was cool. I enjoyed the two tours we went on. The first, as I mentioned above was an underground tour. We went into some underground vaults/rooms that were originally made as store rooms for expensive shops on the Royal Mile but due to the stone that was used to make them they ended up leaking and not being a good place to store goods. Also, the rent was really high. A few years after their construction they were empty and in moved the poor and homeless. It wasn’t a nice place to live but for those who had nothing else, it was a home. We heard many stories about what went on in the various rooms and the ghosts that supposedly reside there now. Nothing supernatural happened during our tour but the guide claims things do happen from time to time. Edinburgh Castle

We went back to the hostel to officially check in and get ready for the evening. We went to a small restaurant/take away for dinner. It was called Yum Yum and had the typical combination of pizza, burgers and kebabs. Since I had not had a kebab since coming to England I decided it was high time I have one since I really liked them in France. The UK version is a bit different from the France version but it was still good!

After dinner we went on one last tour that we could use our pass for. Sadly the hour and a half walking tour ended up taking place in the rain. It was informative and fun but we were all very glad to get back to the hostel and put dry clothes on by the end.
Day one in Edinburgh was a success.

Saturday Oct. 23
Our second day in Edinburgh was mostly spent on the Hairy Coo Tour (http://www.thehairycoo.com/). It is a free tour of the Scottish Highlands and it was fabulous! This small company started in June and runs tours for “free” 7 days a week. At the end of the tour you tip the guide and pay what you are able/can afford. The tour started at 9 am and lasted until 6:30 pm. It was a fabulous way to spend a day! So many beautiful views!
The first stop was the William Wallace monument.

At the top of the crest there is something that looks like pineapple to me but it is actually thistle which is the national emblem of Scotland and the reason why I saw "pineapple" all over Edinburgh.

Next we stopped at Doune Castle where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed. The guide had some props with him including coconut shells so we went around the castle clapping the coconut shells together like they do in the movie. It was great.
Our third stop was Aberfoyle. It was a small town and it was our lunch break stop. We ate lunch and then wandered around. There was a Chinese celebration taking place and there were four birds of prey on display from a raptor center.
Then we went to the first Loch, or Lake in Scottish, Loch Drunkie.
On the way to our next stop we had our first hairy coo sighting! It was exciting.
Loch Achray was the next stop. A nice Loch that reminded me of Lake Sag at SJU because there was a small church on across the Loch from where we were and no other buildings in sight…kinda like the Stella Maris chapel.
Since we were on a Hairy Coo Tour we of course needed to see some more hairy coo which the next two stops included. The first was a hotel that had some fenced in hairy coo. (The hat below isn't mine but another prop the tour guide had for us to borrow through out the day)
Next was Hamish, who is a famous hairy coo because he has been in several movies although I can’t remember which. Hamish and his lady coo friend Heather.

I don't remember the details but at somepoint a waterway was built between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Instead of starting in the middle and working towards the two cities the waterway was started in the two cities but never met up in the middle! So the solution was to build this contraption that takes a boat from one part of the waterway to the other.
Our last stop was to look at the bridges across the Forth, which is the river that runs through Edinburgh.

We found a restaurant/pub that had a great meal deal for dinner. For £3.50 we got a hamburger, fries and cider. Yum! So one thing that my flat mates find amusing about me is my ketchup consumption - which just so happens to be a lot more than they eat. Naturally with a meal consisting of a hamburger and fries, I use a lot of ketchup. At one point, Abby decided that if I ate any more ketchup I was going to have sodium level issues and put the lid on the ketchup bottle saying I couldn’t have anymore….luckily I didn’t need anymore! We had a chill evening and talked with some of the other people staying in our room at the hostel.

Sunday Oct. 24
We got up at a decent time since we had gone to bed fairly early and lounged around before getting going around 11. Abby was meeting a friend and Melissa and I went on a free walking tour. Although we heard a lot of repeat information we did learn some new information and see some new sights including the coffee shop where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the school/castle she modeled Hogwarts off of.

The picture above is of an old fashion buglar alarm, or a trick step. Apparently lots of staircases had trick steps in them. The home owners would know where the trick step was and be able to help guests avoid this step. However, if a burglar was trying to sneak up your steps to rob your house, they would not notice the step and fall noisily down the steps.

We met up with Abby in the afternoon and walked down the Royal Mile to hike up to Arthur’s seat. Boy was it a hike! It was definitely more of a work out than I was expecting. There were several paths you could choose and I think we picked the most vertical one! But it was worth it! The view was great!!! Of course, none of the pictures do the view justice.

For the rest of the day we wandered along the Royal Mile and Princes Street stopping in many tourist shops and Build-A-Bear to get Pandanick’s pawsport stamped (Melissa’s boyfriend gave her a bear from Build-A-Bear before she left).

For dinner we ate at a restaurant called Zenobia and I had falafel for the first time. It was great! It is definitely going on my list of approved foods and I hope to have it again soon!

Our train didn’t leave until 9:00 pm. After dinner we didn’t have too much time before our train left but we did have enough time to get our stuff from the hostel and for Melissa and I to apply for youth railcards (Abby got her card online).

I had a great time in Edinburgh!

2010-10-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Hi!

I haven't been keeping very good notes on what has been going on so I have forgotten many of the day to day details that I normally write about. I have included what I do remember or info from the days I did journal or jot down what I did.

Wednesday Oct. 6
I was planning on checking out the rowing club in Newburn again since the forecast looked favorable. However, when I woke up it was pouring rain! I decided the trip wouldn’t be worth it to spend 45 minutes on an erg and then head back home so I went back to bed. When I got up an hour and a half later it was sunny and looked beautiful outside! Frustrating! I don’t understand weather at all.

Friday Oct. 8
We had prayer and breakfast as usual with the sisters and did random things until it was time for bike repairs at KK. We had decided to go to Hadrian’s Wall on Saturday so after dinner we looked up information about getting there and things to do. Basically in the process we figured out that it was way to last minute to figure it all out. So then we thought maybe it would be easier to go to Alnwick Castle instead. Figuring out how to get there wasn’t easy either. So then we decided it would be a Newcastle weekend. We were all bummer but definitely learned our lesson about trying to plan something last minute!

Saturday Oct. 9
On Friday I got a notice saying I had a package to pick up at the post office but it was too late to get it on Friday by the time I got it. Since the post office was open until 10:15 am on Saturday I decided to go there and get my package. When I got there I was shocked to see about 15 people ahead of me in line! I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it to the counter because I got there about 15 minutes before it was closing. I ended up making it in time only to find out that it apparently takes 48 hours for the packages to be brought to the post office! Crazy. Oh well.

Melissa and I decided to go to the Center for Life science museum for the afternoon. Since a year pass was about the price of going to the museum twice we both got year passes. From the website and the outside it looks like a very large museum so we were both a bit surprised when we were walking through to find out that it was much smaller than we expected. I was expecting something the size of the science museum in Minneapolis and it probably wasn’t even half as big. They have a big Doctor Who exhibit right now. Doctor Who is a big TV show over here but Melissa and I haven’t watched it but apparently it is very popular! Later in the year it is going to be a Wallace and Gromit exhibit which I am excited for! They do have a planetarium and theater with a variety of shows/videos about topics from astronauts to ice. Although it is not as big as I was expecting, I’m excited to go to the different exhibits and shows throughout the year. They also have a big skating rink during the winter and although it costs extra, I’m excited about that too!

Sunday Oct. 10

I went to the Tynemouth rowing again today because they were planning on having a mini regetta....sadly it was too choppy for rowing. So instead we had many relay races and competitions (including a sand castle building contest). It was fun and a work out! After all the competitions we had a barbeque. It was quite the site watching as they attempted to light the charcoal for the grill in the windy weather. Eventually the charcoal was lite and lunch was served.

There was a large group of people with camo cameras all crowded on the sidewalk by towards the priory. We learned that there was a small bird that some how got off course from Siberia or somewhere far away hanging out in a tree on the hill and lots of bird watchers came to see it.

Wednesday Oct. 12
I got up early to head to rowing since it was going to be a nice day. It was a nice day and walking over the bridge to the rowing club I noticed that the water was perfect! Flat as glass! A great day to learn sculling! However, when I got to the rowing club I was told that the coach quit and there was no one to teach me! I was bummed! Then I remembered that there was another rowing club across the river that had a learn to row course starting in half an hour. This club never got back to me when I was contacting the 3 clubs nearest to me but I figured I should check it out anyway since I was already there. I’m glad I went because there were 2 other women there learning and a coach so we took a quad out! Sculling was a bit more complicated than the sweep rowing I’m used to but by the end I was getting the hang of it. I will be purchasing a pair of Wellies in the near future though because we walk into the water and it is cold and muddy! I was really glad I got to row although nothing compares to rowing on beautiful Lake Sag!

After Kids Kabin Melissa and I went to a talk “Where will Science be in the next 10 years” at the Center for Life. There were 4 people talking about their prediction for what science will do in the next 10 years. It was interesting but different than I was expecting. It was good to have a bit of brain stimulation!

I watched some of the Chilean miners rescues online and was very happy for the miners and their families!

Thursday Oct. 13
After the normal KK sessions, another worker and I went to visit many of the kids who attend KK to invite them on some of the half term trips that are coming up in a week and a half. We were invited into many of the houses when talking to the parents and dropping off forms . It was really interesting to see where many of them live. I was surprised by how nice many of their houses are. This brings up a point I have been meaning to write about for awhile. We have been told time and again about how poor of a neighborhood we are in is and yet I look around me and see a lower-middle class neighborhood…nothing like what I would expect to see in a poor neighborhood in the US. During our orientation week a local man who has lived and worked in the area for several years talked to us about the area, poverty and some problems the area is facing. During this time he showed us an interesting map online and it ranked each about 100 house area by income. According to this map (which I want to find again), we are in a very poor area of England. The welfare system seems to be much better in England than in the US. Even though there is a lot of unemployment (many men trained to do specific jobs and then those industries moved out of the area) everyone has a house and gets money for food. Last night (Saturday Oct. 16) we were over at the Pendower Good Neighbor Project where the other Newcastle AMA volunteers are located and we were talking about this topic with them and three guys who are Geordies (1 current volunteer, 1 past volunteer and 1 friend of the current volunteer). Homelessness is not a big deal here at all. There are no homeless shelters or soup kitchens that I know of, I just don’t think they exist here. There are homeless people but it seems like it is pretty hard to lose the government housing you are given. Healthcare is also free which seems to work pretty well here and this means the poor have the same access to healthcare as the rich. It is taking me awhile to get used to this new view of “poverty” and I’m having a bit of a hard time doing this. Well, I’m not sure I did a good job explaining my thoughts on this idea but time to move on.

Saturday Oct. 16
We took the bus to York for the day. Abby was an RA for two years in college and one of her RDs was in York on a trip with grad students studying student development so they were on a trip visiting universities in England and Scotland to compare them to universities in the US. Melissa studied abroad in York and we all wanted to go there at some point so we took this opportunity to go to York. Abby had lunch with her RD and Melissa went to the York Minster to get in free by going to noon prayer. Unfortunately there was some special service going on and then a wedding. You could still pay the £8 pounds to get in but we really just wanted to get in for free so we settled for seeing what we could see from the entrance and the outside. I have seen several big churches from study abroad, family trips and one while I’ve been here. I know I will see more big churches so I don’t feel like I missed out on too much by not paying to go into “the Minster” as they call it. We spent the day pretty much just wandering around the town. We walked over to Cliford’s Tower but didn’t go in because there really isn’t much to see inside according to Melissa. It is pretty small and doesn’t look like there would be much to see inside. I really liked the Shambles street! York is a medieval city and this is an area where the streets are especially narrow and it is said that people would pass things to each other across the road through open upper story windows! There were lots of old cool looking buildings! It was a fun town to wander though! There were lots of fun shops to go into and browse around! There were some stores that I really liked although I did resist the urge to buy lots of things and only bought two small items which might end up as gifts for others. It is pretty small and I feel like I walked down many streets multiple times but I didn’t get bored! There is also a wall that surrounds the city and we walked on two different parts of it. The wall is about 3 miles which is totally doable but we didn’t feel like it was necessary to walk the whole wall. We also stopped in an art museum and there was a neat exhibit on hats. We had good weather for the most part but it did rain 3 times but they were sun showers/sprinkles and didn’t really cause any problems.

When we got back to Newcastle we went over to Pendower to visit the other AMA volunteers there. It has probably been a month since we have seen them! They are really nice and we all want to get to know them better! Sadly one of them leaves in January! It was a fun night with lots of laughs and cultural comparisons since there were 4 Americans, 3 from England, 1 from the Philippians and 1 from the Czech Republic.

I hope you are all enjoying the fall colors in MN!!

Laura

2010-10-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

Wednesday September 29

I got up early and ventured over to Newburn on the other side of Newcastle to check out a rowing club. It was kinda rainy and I was the only person who showed up to row! It was too choppy on the river so I just did an erg work out instead. It was nice anyway and I hope that more people will come! For now I will try it a few more times and while I am learning sculling it will be fine if there aren’t many people but a main part of why I wanted to find a place to row was so I could meet other people, hopefully some around my age. There is another rowing club I found and want to try out as well.

Kids Kabin was a pretty normal day. Melissa and I were in art and of course the activity we had out as a suggestion no one wanted to do. Oh well. We like having ideas out but they can really do whatever they want to do.

Thursday September 30

Today was my 23rd birthday! The day started out with a nice table display! On the table my flatmates put all my “favorite things” include the jar of Nutella and bottle of ketchup! They had a bagel for me to eat since the nickname I got during our AMA training was “bagels” (I was the only mid-westerner and they all thought I said it funny). They also had a massive “Birthday Girl” button for me to wear and I did wear it all day.

I went to common ground and got many happy birthday wishes from the clients and the staff.
At Kids Kabin, I had cake #1 during the staff pre-session meeting that Abby and Melissa made.

Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, so good!! I was in art again and part way through the session the cookery group came in with two more cakes for my birthday! There were 4 kids in cookery that day, 2 brunettes and 2 red heads and they made the cakes according to hair color. The red heads made a “ginger cake” that didn’t actually have any ginger in it but they dyed the icing orange. They must not have mixed the food coloring all the way or something because it honestly looked like there was a cheesy pasta sauce on top of the cake!! The brunettes had normal chocolate frosting. Another special touch to these cakes was the chocolate covered chilled corn flakes they put under the frosting.

After Kids Kabin Abby, Melissa, and 4 of the staff/volunteers from Kids Kabin went out. Our first stop was the Salsa Café where we got nachos and sangria. After the massive nacho platters were cleared we went to two other pubs for a drink at each one. It was a fun evening.

We parted ways and headed to the bus stop at about 11:30 pm and ran the last few feet to catch the 39 bus but upon requesting a ticket to Walker (the neighborhood we live in) were told that this bus was only going to Byker (neighborhood before ours but about a 20 minute walk from our flat) and were told that the 40 is the one we want so we got off. Upon consulting the schedule we found out that there were no more 40 buses and that was the last 39 bus of the night!! So that meant walk or take a cab….we all decided to walk at least part of the 3 miles home since that would be an expensive cab! It was a beautiful night and we knew the way home. It was well lit the whole way and actually didn’t seem like that long of a walk. We were all a bit upset with the bus driver for not knowing there were no more buses we could take!

About 30 seconds after I got home and turned my computer on I got a Skype call from my parents that quickly turned into a conference call with Emily and Patrick! It was great to talk to everyone at the same time!!!

Thanks for the birthday wishes everyone!!!!!

Friday October 1
As we normally do, we went to the sisters’ house for morning prayer and breakfast. This is where I got birthday cake #4! Lemon drizzle…yum!! I can say with certainty that I have never had 4 cakes for one birthday before!

After we got back from prayer/breakfast my flatmates gave me their gifts….a big tin of Cadbury chocolates and socks they decorated! I love fun socks! They think my Central Minnesota Federal Credit Union socks are hilarious…can’t argue with free socks that you get in your school mailbox!
In the afternoon we went in and learned about bike wheels and then helped out with bike repairs.

In the evening we went to a mass for Fr. Bill, who led the Holy Island retreat, since it was his 40th anniversary. It was a nice mass and it was fun to see people we met the weekend before. We were also introduced to many new people and socialized for awhile before heading back to our flat.

Saturday October 2
Unlike most Saturdays, we worked today. A group called the Art Fanatics came to KK from 10:45 -2:15 so we were there from about 10:15 to 3:30. For some reason there was a power outage about an hour into their time and we were all confused! We couldn’t tell if it was a power outage or if we had blown a fuse somehow! After checking the fuse box we decided it must have been a power outage. Luckily most of what they were doing did not need electricity. They were a fun group and did some nice work!

We had wanted to go to “Romeo and Juliet” that was showing at a theater in Newcastle but didn’t get tickets in time. So we decided to go to “Eat, Pray, Love” instead. It was a good movie but we all left craving Italian food!

Sunday October 3

I got up pretty early for a Sunday because I wanted to go to Tynemouth and try the rowing club there that meets at 10 am on Sundays. It was sprinkling/raining but I figured that I would go anyway since rain is pretty common and rain doesn’t necessarily mean the water would be choppy. The water was a bit rough so we didn’t row but I erged for a little bit and then went on a jog with the group. I have not been running/jogging in a long time but it felt good! I was much happier with the atmosphere/group dynamics here! There were people my age (as well as older people) but most importantly, there were people unlike the other club I tried earlier in the week. I took the metro to Tynemouth which was clean and fast! Apparently there is a huge market in the Tynemouth metro station on Sundays and I had a good time wandering around the market when I was done even though I didn’t buy anything.
I went shopping with Abby in the afternoon. I was on a hunt for a cheap flat sheet since we don’t have any in our apartment (all our beds have a fitted sheet and a duvet) and they are just apparently not very common or cheap here! It is just so strange but I am not willing to pay £7 for a piece of fabric! The search will continue but I doubt I will find one! Melissa went over to the big shopping mall in Gateshead (across the river from Newcastle) and she even looked in the Ikea but they weren’t cheap there either.

For mass we went to the chaplaincy in Newcastle for Newcastle University and Northumbria University. It was their welcome mass and we liked it the best of the masses we have been to so far! The music was what we are used and there was no Latin! We will definitely be going back but are also going to try out the Sunday evening mass at one or two more churches just to give them a chance as well. We met a student studying abroad from the states which was fun and were able to tell him where to find ranch dressing! Apparently no one in his group had successfully located ranch in the 3 weeks they had been here.

Monday October 4
I slept in and did various things around the house like cleaning my room and vacuuming the flat as well as finishing the preparations for the cookery session with the local primary school. I went to the school to help walk the kids over to Kids Kabin with their helper teacher. The session went really well and they all gave me hugs at the end! They are so cute! When we were walking back to the school one of the kids asked me if where I was from and I said America. Then she asked me to say “hello” how I would say it at home so I said “hello”. She then said “No, like say hello in your language”. Haha. Apparently she was under the impression that we spoke a different language in the United States so I explained that even though we have some different words and a different accent we speak English in the United States.

Tuesday October 5
I normally go to Common Ground on Tuesdays but we had a training session at Kids Kabin from 9:30 -3:15 so I had to skip Common Ground for the day. The training was interesting and it was all about child development and things we can to do help build them develop in positive ways. It was a very interactive training session which was nice! The two ladies doing the training session were very nice and we will have another training session with them in 2 weeks.
Melissa and I ran cookery today. It was a bit chaotic but still fun. One of the volunteers has a gluten allergy so we convinced the kids to use the gluten free flour to make one of the pizzas but they were all a bit weary of it! No one else seemed to mind when we handed it out though. It is amazing how much of a mess 4 kids can make though! I think I can safely say this was the messiest I have ever seen the kitchen after a cookery session.

The last few days have been really nice out with more sun and warmer temps than we have had recently. It is on days like these that I miss MN falls and having a back yard and lots of outdoor space to use! I am inside most of the day either at Common Ground or at Kids Kabin and by the time we get home it is getting dark or it is dark if it is a street session night.
That is about it. It seems like a lot has happened since I last wrote but when I sit down to write about it, I can’t really think of anything interesting to share!

2010-09-29T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it has been so long since I updated my blog!

This past weekend, Melissa, Abby and I went on a retreat to Holy Island. Sr. Josepha invited us to go and we gladly accepted her offer! We left at 6pm on Friday evening. We got to the island a few minutes early and had to wait for the tide to go out a little more before we could get on the island. Holy Island is a tidal island and can only be accessed when the tide is low enough. We got all settled in, had tea and dinner. Originally there was going to be a session Friday evening but someone decided it was too late so most people went to the bar instead! Haha! It was actually the first time we went to a pub since being here in England! It was a cute little pub!

Saturday morning started with morning prayer, a full English breakfast (oatmeal, toast, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans and sausage), mass and the session that was supposed to take place on Friday evening. We had a little bit of free time before lunch (pizza) so Melissa, Abby and I wandered around the town and the gift shops. In the afternoon we went on a nice walk!! Sr. Josepha and two others who had been there before showed us a good path! We walked by big fields with lots of sheep, walked by the castle and the harbor. The whole group met up by St. Cuthbert's Island with an object we had found to represent a change in ourselves during the past year and talked about them. We had some more free time before dinner. We went back to where we were staying since we were a bit chilly and warmed up with some tea and snuggled up to read and relax. Dinner was fish and chips. Being the ketchup loving that I am, I used a lot of ketchup! Abby and one of the other people I was eating with thought it was a bit much! Like I was eating ketchup with a side of chips. Luckily it was Heinz. I can't remember what we did right after dinner but eventually we headed to the pub again. There was a wedding party outside the pub under a tent and it was more crowded in general. We had a good time talking and playing many camp type games.

On Sunday we again had morning prayer and breakfast. We had enough time between breakfast and mass to go to St. Cuthbert's Island. When the tide is out you can walk across to the island. There was still a bunch of water and it was tricky getting across without getting wet. After mass we had treats and sadly that was the end of the retreat. We were invited to help out at the camps they run during the summer and hope to come back to help with a week long camp in May!

When we got back to our flat we noticed that Br. Ralph had been in and fixed a few things that needed fixing. He came back about an hour after we got there to continue fixing one of our blinds and informed us that the left side of the puzzle we started had 26 pieces while the right side had 28 pieces! I ended up finding 2 edge pieces to add to the left side but I was amazed that he had counted the pieces on each side!

Lindisfarne Castle

A cute building in town

Sheep!!

The sheds are old boats cut in half!!

St. Cuthbert's Island

St. Mary's Church

St. Mary's graveyard

Pretty flowers!!

On Monday I ran two session for the first time. In the afternoon I had a group from a local primary school come in and we made pasta with Bolognese sauce. Eight kids from the class (24 kids total in the class) will be coming in for the next 6 weeks. Things went pretty well and everyone enjoyed the end result except for the one kid who doesn't like pasta. Next week a different group of eight will come in and we will make something else. I also ran a normal session with the help of a young volunteer (a 13+ year old who has attended Kids Kabin and wants to come back to volunteer). This went pretty well as well. One of the kids kept trying to get away with stuff by saying "But Will lets us to ____". Of course I knew Will does not let people do most of what they said and did not let them do it! There are definitely things that can be improved upon but it was nice to start having more responsibility. From now on I will be more or less in charge of cooking on Mondays and Melissa and I will be in charge of art on Wednesdays.

On Tuesday my day started with Common Ground. It was overall a slow day at Common Ground. However, there were several donations that came in. It is "Harvest Festival" now and lots of churches hold food drives and Common Ground received several food donations. In addition to the usual canned food there was a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables. There must have been about 20 huge heads of cabbage donated....turns out not many people wanted the cabbage either! Some people were excited about it but most of the people coming in for food did not want the cabbage.

At Kids Kabin I helped in the wood work session. Whenever I do wood work I find it more interesting and fun than I expect it to be. I spent the whole time keeping one kid on track with his project of making a chair. He was pretty small and needed some help cutting the wood as well. He would do some but just didn't seem to have enough strength to do all the cutting.

This morning I got up early and ventured to the other side of town in search of a rowing club. There were two clubs right across the river from each other but when I contacted them only one got back to me so that is the one I went to today. The facilities are nice but I was the only person who showed up for the day time rowing. Since I was new and we took time getting a tour of the buildings and the river was a bit choppy I did and erg work out instead of actually rowing. It was good and I got some helpful pointers. I wanted to find a place to row for the physical activity but also for the social aspect which looks like it might be lacking at this club. On Sunday I am going to try out another rowing club that is in Tynemouth. Distance wise is actually a little closer than the one I went to today in Newcastle and I hope I will find the atmosphere I am looking for there!

2010-09-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

Tuesday September 14

I had a 10 am meeting with Nina to go over health and safety stuff. I was falling asleep so badly while reading all the info! After the meeting I went to the Walker library since I hadn’t been there yet. It is small but nice. I checked out a book and browsed. I hope to go to the big library in the city centre soon.

At Kids Kabin I bummed around and played piano before the kids came. It was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. For the sessions I was in art and had a good time cutting out letters and helping kids pick colors, draw lines or cut holes. They were making a nice banner that said Welcome 2 Kids Kabin to hang in the hallway. I helped one girl use a sewing machine for the first time which was fun!

Wednesday September 15

Today Melissa and I went to Common Ground. We waited a few minutes and then basically went over policy stuff with Paul until 1. I am going to struggle with “actively sitting” and not really doing what I was expecting to be able to do at Common Ground. It sounds like once we are there a little while we will be able to do more interesting stuff but for now we are in the welcoming area. I really want this site to work out because it will be different and a challenge but I might find it too challenging. Only time will tell.

I was in woodwork for the sessions at Kids Kabin and was only so so as far as being helpful. One of the boys who had seen me at church excitedly asked if I knew that the Pope was making a trip to the UK. Most of the kids worked pretty independently today so I didn't have a lot to help with until people in the art room next door had sewing machine issues and asked if I could help. Will has no idea how to use it and wants me to show him how on Friday before bike repairs.

I went with for a street session for the first time. It was on Hexam Ave which is about 2 blocks from Kids Kabin. It was windy so we only had the pottery wheel out and brought paper to have an art competition. A 4 year old girl I was helping hold down the paper for while she was drawing said I didn’t talk right. Haha.

Thursday September 16

Today was my first day at Common Ground. When I got there I noticed there weren’t any clean coffee cups so I brought the dirty ones back to the kitchen, washed them and brought out clean cups. Everyone who comes in has tea or coffee so it seemed important to have clean cups for the start of the day. After a few minutes Ali, a volunteer from Iran, came out from talking with Paul and showed me around a little more. He talked my ear off all day! His English is good but I did have trouble understanding him sometimes. I organized a few things in the shop, said Hi to people and got to help with a phone call! That was the most exciting part of the day! I want to say anything I shouldn't but basically the man who came in for help wasn't comfortable with his English phone conversation skills so I made a call on his behalf. It was nice to do something I felt was actually useful! I have not perfected the art of “actively sitting” but if I get to do more things like helping with phone calls I will be happy! I can see that the people who come in really enjoy coming and it is an important place for them. It is different than I expected and will probably test my patience. Oh well. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out but I do want to try it.

At Kids Kabin, I was in "artery" today-art and pottery combo day. Abby and I were originally going to do art but then some of the kids wanted to do pottery and since Abby knows a lot about pottery we moved some art supplies into the pottery room and had a combo day. One of the kids was drawing for most of the time and we had a great conversation. He is a great kid! He told me how he wants to work really hard in school, go to university and law school to be a solicitor…not really sure what that is but oh well. Then he wants to travel the world and write books. He was very focused and asked me questions too. He asked me what kind of music I like to listen too, what I studied in school, what my strengths are, etc! For street session we took out cookery and games. They made popcorn in cookery and I mostly played games. I played “snake” with the jump rope with some kids and throw a ball to this tiny boy for ages! He had a paddle that was velcroy on one side and he was trying to hit it. He was super cute.

Friday September 17

Today started out bright and early with prayer at the Sisters/Brothers on Hexam ave. I had to get up before 8 which was not easy to do at all! Br. Ralph was there along with Jill, Patricia and Christine. Sr. Slyvia is still on holiday. After we ate breakfast with them which was nice. Out of no where Br. Ralph pulls out these one liners:
1. “London is a suburb of Hell. Discuss”
2. “What the bikini covers is more important than what it reveals. (Discuss)”
Sr. Christine was like “Ralph!” and turned red. It was hilarious!

After, we came home and bummed around (Melissa went to KK for her health and safety meeting) until going to KK around 1:30. I showed Will some sewing stuff since he had asked me for a crash course in sewing. He said he knows more now than he did before so that is good!

Bike repairs were busy as usual. Beforehand Will showed us about direct brakes and we took some apart and put them back together. During the session I helped a kid fix that kid of brakes! He had a good idea what he was doing and just needed some guidance and support/affirmation.

We made chicken tacos and guacamole for dinner! It was delicious! At one point I realized the hot water wasn’t working and that our boiler had an error message on it. We didn’t have a manual but I found one online. I also realized we had our boiler set on hot water only, not hot water and heating!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG! That was why it was cold inside! We all just expected the heat to kick in sometime and it hadn't. There is a switch with a bandaid over it that we know has to stay on for the heat to work so we just thought that was all we had to do. Since we didn't want to go without heat and hot water we braved the crazy machine and got it repressurized and we got hot water and heat!!! So amazing!

The next kink in the day is that Helen emailed saying we exceeded our internet allowance. What the heck!?! How does that happen? Apparently we are allowed 10 GB of internet?!? We don’t really understand what it means but by searching the web we found out that amount is for one person with normal internet usage so it would have been fine when Rebecca was the only person using the internet. For 5 pounds more we can get 60 GB so we are going to try to get it switched! We have only been here 2 weeks and we already went over the monthly limit so it for sure needs to change! We are all willing to pay the extra to get more internet. Still confused as to why it has a limit! Apparently from 8 am to midnight you pay and from midnight to 8 am is free. Crazy England!

On a positive note, I did two loads of laundry without any problems. No 2.5 hour wash cycle like Melissa had the other day! There are so many choices on the washing machine! I just wanted my Hot/cold, cold/cold, and a few other choices but we have A-L for different types of clothes, a wide range of temperature setting and a couple other options.

Saturday September 18, 2010

We went to Durham with Br. Ralph today. We walked through some streets that were busy and down by the river crossed a bridge and up to the Cathedral. It is built on a piece of land by where the river Wear makes a U bend meaning it is protected on 3 sides. It was originally a Catholic Cathedral with a Benedictine Monastery but is an Anglican Church today. We climbed the tower and had a nice view of the city and the church grounds below. There were 325 steps and we were definitely tired by the time we got to the top! I counted at least 13 wind turbines in the distance. The weather was nice and I ended up carrying my jacket most of the time.

We watched a video about the Cathedral which talked about St. Cuthbert a lot. He was a monk and the bishop of on Lindisfarne where we will be going next weekend for a retreat! After St. Cuthbert’s death, the monks had to flee Lindisfarne and they brought St. Cuthbert’s coffin with them. They fled to several locations before finding the current location of the Durham location where they would be safe.

As we were walking through the Cathedral/old monastery part I thought that it looked a lot like Harry Potter! Melissa thought the same thing and looked up the filming location of the Harry Potter movies and some of the movies had parts filmed in the Cathedral!! I now really want to watch my Harry Potter DVDs to see if I recognize parts of the Cathedral!

On the way home we stopped at the Angel of the North. It is a large steel statue in Gateshead (across the river from Newcaslte) that is somewhat famous. I saw it from the car on the way up to Newcastle and it was a nice addition to our Durham trip. Br. Ralph was funny and kept quizzing us on the information we read about the statue on the info board at the statue.

We had another lazy evening and watched Elizabeth Town. I remember not liking the movie the first time I saw it but it is Abby’s favorite movie so I figured I would give it another try. It was better the second time around but I won’t be adding it to my list of favorite movies.

Sunday September 19

Today we went to church at St. Mary’s Cathedral in the city center. We went to the 10 am mass but want to attend the 6:30 pm mass in the near future because it is the youth mass. The mass was nice but a bit more traditional than I am used to. There was a nice haze on incense by the end of mass and some things were in Latin, although not much.

After mass Melissa caught the bus to go to a football (soccer) match with a team she is interested in joining. Abby and I found a nice little restaurant for lunch and then wandered around town doing some shopping. Abby needed a coat and I wanted a pair of boots since I know I will need them. We went to H&M and Primark as our first stops. I had seen cheap boots at Primark last week but they didn’t have any left in my size but I did find a cute skirt for 2 pounds! It is longer and I can wear leggings under it for extra warmth. Abby found a cute jacket for a good price at H&M. We wandered around and I found some boots. They are the same style as UGG boots but were cheap. They probably are the kind that will wear out after a year but that is fine with me! We also went to the Laing gallery and the library. The library in the city centre is huge! We had a good time browsing and each ended up taking 4 books home. I was super excited about the DVD selections and had picked out 4 movies I really wanted to see only to find out it costs 2 pounds to rent a DVD! What?! I expected the DVDs to be free to rent like in the US but I guess not. There are some DVDs the previous volunteers left but not a ton and we will probably watch all of them in another month or so. I brought some DVDs with me but I have to watch them on my computer since they are region 1 DVDs and the DVDs here are region 2. It is just nice to have a larger screen but I will settle for using my computer. Before we went to the gallery we walked down by the Quayside, across the Tyne Bridge and back across the Millennium Bridge, looked at some vendors and back into town. It was nice wandering around and due to the half marathon that started in Newcastle today a bunch of streets were blocked off to cars which made our rooming easier.

We were tired from our 5 hours of walking around town and shopping and both spend a good 2 hours reading before doing anything else when we got home. We ended up walking down the street to the Magic Wok for Chinese take away. It was good and the leftovers will make a great lunch tomorrow but we were disappointed they didn’t have sesame chicken!

Well, that is about it for the week. Although I have been here 2.5 weeks, I still feel like I am settling in and figuring out my routine. My flatmates are really nice and easy to get a long with, everyone at Kids Kabin is super nice and the sister/brothers are very welcoming. It just takes time to get adjusted and I guess I thought it would take less time than it is.

2010-09-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 12

We took the bus into town and went to mass at St. Andrew’s in the morning. The music was livelier and we decided we liked it better than St. Anthony’s across the street but we have a couple more churches to try before deciding where we will go on a regular basis.

After church we walked over to St. Nicholas’s church and got tickets for the 1:45 tower tour. We were all hungry so we walked around looking for a lunch place that would have options and be fairly cheap. We ended up in the Eldon shopping center at a sandwich place called O’Brien’s.

The tower tour was cool! First we climbed up to the bell ringing area and some of the bell ringers were there and played a piece for us. It was very cool. The group was too large to go farther up all at once so we went in shifts. Abby, Melissa and I stayed back and waited. While we were waiting one of the bell ringers opened a door and it opened out onto the roof of the main part of the church and they said we could go out on the roof if we wanted to. Of course we did! We got a nice view and it passed the time while we were waiting. There were a lot of stairs to climb to the top! But it was cool! We got a nice view of town and of Castle Keep which was our next stop.

Melissa and Abby on the roof of St. Nicholas's church

Castle Keep and the Tower Tour were free because it was Tyne and Wear Heritage Open Days. There were a lot of free events from Thursday-Sunday. The castle itself is small, or I should say what is left of it. There was a model showing what the castle looked like before and there was a lot more but it was partially destroyed at some point. It was fun seeing the castle that Newcastle-Upon-Tyne was named after! There were free posters at Castle Keep so I took one to hang in my room! When we were on top of Castle Keep we saw the Millennium bridge rotated to let a boat pass under. :)

After the two tours we went shopping. We compared phone plans and decided to go with T-Mobile and we got pay as you go phones. I have no idea how much I will use my cell phone but it is nice to have one anyway. We wandered around town a bit more and stopped in a few stores for various items or just to look at what they had. By the time we went home we were all very tired!

Monday September 13

We are still figuring out our morning schedules so we didn’t really have anything going on in the morning. To make good use of our time we decided to go register with the doctor across from Kids Kabin. We got information and the forms to fill out but are not actually able to sign up until we get our bank cards in the mail in a few days because we need proof of address and don’t have anything from the acceptable list. Hopefully by early next week we will be all signed up.

I went over to Kids Kabin at 1:30 for a meeting with Will to talk about hours, expectations, how things are going so far, etc. (He wants us to come in around 1:00 pm. Although on days that I volunteer at Common Ground I will not get there until later since the hours at Common Ground will be 10am-2pm. I want to volunteer there 2 days a week. We will stay until about 6:00 pm two days a week and 8:00 pm two days a week. If we are staying until 8:00 pm that means we are helping with the street session which means we go with a couple other staff and volunteers to different neighborhoods and do activities. The activities are brought via trailers that attach to bikes and could be cooking, pottery, bike repairs or possibly other activities. Fridays will vary depending on the week but there are only bike repairs on Friday afternoons and no street sessions. ). After that I helped the other staff members with various projects until the kids came for the afternoon session. I was in cooking again and helped the kids make pasta and pasta sauce. They had some good ideas and each of the 4 groups made different pasta sauces that all tasted great!

At the end of Kids Kabin today Br. Ralph came up to me and asked if Abby, Melissa and I had any plans for the coming weekend. I said I didn't think so. He then offered to bring the three of us to Durham on Saturday! And if next weekend didn't work, he said that "the castle has been there for centuries so if this weekend doesn't work it will still be around in a fortnight". Haha! So it looks like we will be going to Durham on Saturday with Br. Ralph! Exciting! Durham is really close but it will be an adventure anyway. The Great North Run is on Sunday and starts or ends (or both??) in Newcaslte so we plan on watching part of it. Abby likes to run and is particularly excited about seeing it.

Hope your Monday is going great!

Laura

The rest of the week

2010-09-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here is an overview of what I did for the rest of the week. Sorry I don't have any pictures.

Wednesday September 8
We each had quick meetings at Kids Kabin this morning to sign a contract thingy and to go over some policy stuff and set up future meetings to go over more important info. We were supposed to go to St. Anthony’s senior center but they were out on a trip so we had a flat meeting instead to talk about chores, visitors, trips, food, etc. We went back over to Kids Kabin for a staff meeting before the normal afternoon session. Abby, Melissa and I also watched James and Colin work on the bikes we will get to use. They were having some troubles but ended up getting most things sorted out before the kids came. I was in cooking again. Gary was there and there were 2 kids, Connor and Jack. Jack made mash and gravy and Connor made meatballs.Melissa was in dance and Abby was in Art.

After Kids Kabin we got ready to go to mass across the street to celebrate the 150 years of the church across the street. The Bishop came and the church was full. We didn’t stay for the refreshments after mass because we all wanted dinner. We made a lovely chicken pesto pasta type dish and ate it while watching “Baby Mama”. We are tired and needed a chill night. It was a fairly simple day. I really need to get a planner because I now have appointments that are written on random pieces of paper. Oh well, shopping on Friday. So excited! Helen and Carolyn leave tomorrow (Carolyn in the morning and Helen in the evening).

Thursday September 9
We had another busy day! This morning we walked down to St. Vincent’s primary school because it is another option for volunteer sites. We got a tour of the building and stepped into several classrooms. Some of the kids were very excited to hear we came from America! A couple classes sang songs for us and one girl in about first grade showed us her work from earlier in the day. They were really cute and well behaved. St. Vincent’s is a Catholic primary school but unlike the United States, most of the Catholic primary schools are free just like the normal public schools. Everyone there seems really nice and they are flexible with scheduling which is nice as well.

After visiting St. Vincent’s we visited the care center across the street at St. Anthony’s. It is no longer restricted to just seniors but other community members who want to come. They have a wide age range of adults who mostly are either seniors or have learning difficulties or other challenges. They are also flexible with scheduling.

We went back to Kids Kabin at about 1. Melissa and I completely took apart a bike! One of the activities they run is bike repairs and in order to get a better idea of how a bike works we had to take apart a bike and put it back together. Abby has an arts background and will be running the pottery room so she spent time there getting things organized. For the actual session I was in wood working today and had a lot more fun than I expected. I was helping a girl who wanted to make a model of Big Ben. Someone else had done this in the past and their project was still in the woodwork room which is where she got the idea. She was focused for most of the time but needed direction because she got distracted and discouraged fairly easily.

After the normal session there was a street session where the staff goes out to a street/neighborhood area and has activities. They have special trailers to pull behind bikes that carry all the supplies. Today they took cookery and pottery on the street session. Abby went with to help with the pottery while Melissa and I kept working on our bikes with the help of one of the staff members. He is very nice and was very helpful. By the end we both had mostly functioning bikes, just a few more changes and they will be good to go! I definitely learned a lot about bikes but I would need to do it all over again to really feel comfortable with what I was doing.

Friday September 10
I slept in until about 10 this morning and it was wonderful! Unfortunately we had a meeting at 2pm at Kids Kabin so we had less time than we were originally thinking to go shopping. We walked to Morrison’s which took about 30 or 35 minutes and took the bus back. The store was SUPER crowded!! We definitely need to try shopping at other times because it was just horrible! We made it through the store, have a fridge and freezer full of food with some money left over too so it was a successful trip.

The meeting was quick and then we had extra time and they wanted us to stay for bike repair session to learn some more about bikes. We learned that the normal activites are Monday- Thursday and they only have bike repairs on Friday afternoon. We helped Abby in the pottery room with our extra time. We unscrewed the top of a table and flipped it over and re-screwed it. One side was really dirty and the other side made the table look brand new. She needed to make another plaster block to dry out renewed clay on so we helped her make the mold. We tried to mix up some plaster for the mold but it was a major fail! Everything was going fine and then it all of a sudden it just set up! It was hard as a rock with the stir stick stuck in it! We found out plaster can expire and it had a use by date of September 2007. Oh well, just need to get some new plaster and we will be good to go.

A lot of kids came to the bike repair session. Some had easy problems to fix and others had lots of problems and ended up leaving their bikes there because they were not fixed. Melissa and I helped with several punctured tires and some brakes. Melissa is getting good a working on breaks because she had to work on her brakes for a long time yesterday!

Melissa did her laundry tonight. As a result we learned that certain setting take a really really long time! Like 2.5 hours to wash. I think I will be choosing the quick wash setting! Melissa found an online manuel for the washer and sent it to Abby and me so we can look up specific option times and not have to want 2.5 hours for our clothes to wash!

Saturday September 11
I got to sleep in again today and it was glorious! We had a lazy start to the day and then went to a community event at the Monkchester Community Center. Sr. Josepha was there and introduced us to some people. Some of the kids there recognized us from Kids Kabin and our visit to St. Vincent’s primary school. We talked to Sr. Josepha about the retreat she had mentioned because we all want to go and it sounds like we can. It is at the end of September and all expenses paid. The retreat is on Holy Island about 100 km north. I'm excited!!

Next we went into Byker and did some necessary shopping. We stopped in the charity shops and other cheap stores. I stocked up on essentials like an extension cord, envelopes, a loofah, an alarm clock (pink to match my room), bike lock, calendar/planner, face soap, etc. I am excited about many of my purchases! We were all tired by the end of our shopping excursion and glad to get home!

One of the stores we stopped in is called TKMaxx, basically exactly the same as TJMaxx in the states it just has a slightly different name for some reason. We ran into someone we met last week during our shopping trip. It is nice to be walking around the shops and start recognizing people and have people recognize us!

After dinner we rearranged all the cupboards in our kitchen and dining room. All the plates, bowls, cups, silverware were in an cupboard on the far side of the dining room and their location was driving us all crazy! So we relocated some kitchen items we won’t use much or at all to the dining room cupboard and put the plates, bowls, etc. in the kitchen cupboards. We also organized and rearranged our food. We are all very happy with the rearranging!

We then planned our day tomorrow. We are going to go to mass in the city centre tomorrow at St. Andrew’s. There is a youth group/youth mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral but it has been under construction and will be opening soon (possibly this weekend). We are going to try to go to some of the free Heritage Weekend events in town as well.

I hope you are all having a great September!

First day at Kids Kabin

2010-09-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

Today was another busy day! We started the day by joining the sisters and Brother Ralph for morning prayer and breakfast. After breakfast we went across town to meet the other AMA (Associate Missionaries of the Assumption) volunteers working at the Pendower project. They are really nice and it was good to get to know some other young adults in Newcastle who we can get together with. Also, one of the volunteers has been here since January and will be good resource since she already knows where everything is in Newcastle. It was nice to see where they live and work and also where the nearest bus stop is to their house since they live too far away to walk.

After lunch we went over to Kids Kabin where Melissa, Abby and I will spend most every afternoon. Kids Kabin is an after school program for kids ages 8-12 and it runs from 3:45-5:15 Monday-Friday. The number of kids varies from day to day but they try to keep a high adult to kid ratio so that each kid can get some individual attention and help with the projects/activities. We met the director, Will, and some of the other staff at Kids Kabin and had a tour of the building. There are rooms for woodwork, pottery, glasswork, general arts and crafts, sewing, cooking, gardening and bike repairs. We spent some time organizing and getting ready for the start of sessions. Kids Kabin had been closed for awhile during the summer vacation and there was a lot that needed to be done. There were only 4 kids that came for the session at 3:45. School doesn’t start until tomorrow and since Kids Kabin just opened today and is connected with school they had no idea how many kids to expect. They said it varies each year when they start again-they can have a ton of kids on the first day or just a few. Today it was just a few. It was nice to start out with a small crowd since we are all getting used to things. We were “kids” for the day and got to participate in the making and not really the leadership roles that we will normally have. I was in the cooking room for the day. There were a bunch of bananas that were going to go bad so we made a banana cake and banana fritters. Both were very tasty! After the kids left we helped with more organization before heading back for a later dinner. It was really nice to get started doing something!

Brother Ralph helps out at Kids Kabin some days and this afternoon he gave Melissa, Abby and I some “proper English chocolate that is a lot better than the Hershey bars we have in America” aka Cadbury chocolate bars. He also printed each of us a copy of the pictures we took this morning outside the sisters’ house. It was so nice!!

We made our first purchases tonight which was exciting even though it was just basic items like lotion, toothpaste and Kleenex! We are looking forward to our free day on Friday – especially to browse through the stores! The simple things like shopping for essentials are suddenly exciting and interesting. I find it interesting looking at the different flavors, packages, names and products!

One interesting thing I’ve noticed so far is that a lot of the outlets have a switch on them to turn the power on and off. I need to start making a list of other differences!

It was another super windy day today! Sadly, it looks like we will be having a few rainy days in a row starting tomorrow. We have been really lucky so far with no rain! I guess I better get used to it!

Take care,
Laura

My flat!

2010-09-05T12:21:00.001-07:00

A tour of our apartment.My bedroom with the hot pink carpet.

The other side of my room. I think the pictures make it look smaller than it is.

The bathroom

The living room

The dining room taken from the kitchen. (You can see the living room too)

Our kitchen with a fridge shorter than me!

2010-09-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Sunday September 5, 2010

We got up and went to church across the street at St. Anthony of Padua at 10:45. It was a nice mass but the music was a bit slow and not as upbeat as I like or am used to. Oh well, we are going to check out some other churches in the coming weeks.

After mass we hopped in the car and headed off to Tynemouth for the afternoon. We started out right in Tynemouth where there is an old castle and priory. We looked at it but didn’t actually go inside - we will have to do that some other day. Then we started our hike up the coast along the beach. We took our shoes off and walked in the sand for awhile. The sand was super soft and felt really nice! The water was freezing but there were many people out surfing, swimming, kayaking and wind surfing. We walked until we reached Cullercoats bay where we stopped for a typical fish and chips lunch. Of course, we had tea to drink. I can already tell I will be drinking a ton of tea this year! It was pretty tasty and the portions were a lot larger than I was expecting. After lunch, Helen and Carolyn walked back to where the car was parked and Melissa, Abby and I walked on to Whiley Bay to see the lighthouse. We had a fun time exploring and being by the sea! It was a great day! I just love the sea/ocean and am glad we live relatively close by!

We are all relaxing and having some quality computer time before a busy week ahead. No more sleeping in! Most of our days start around 8 am this week. We will be visiting the other volunteers across town, spending the afternoons in Kids Kabin, visiting the other volunteer sites, attending a celebration or two and getting to know the town better. I hope you are all having a wonderful Labor Day weekend!!

Tynemouth Castle and priory

Tynemouth

My first fish and chips!

We ate our fish and chips at a table looking out the window of Bill's fish bar that says restaurant tea and coffee.

St. Mary's lighthouse

The first few days in England

2010-09-05T01:59:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone! Due to a lack of internet access I am just getting around to posting an update. I was all set to put this update on my blog last night because we had figured out the internet but then it stopped working! Thankfully, it is working again this morning :)

The weather has been really nice so far! It has not rained and it feels like falls. I could have used a few more days of summer but I do love fall weather!

Wednesday September 1 - Thursday September 2
So as things normally go with flights, there were delays and it didn’t all go as planned although I didn’t miss any flights! We got to the airport with enough time, got to say hi/by to Uncle Rob, Auntie Mary and Elizabeth which was really nice! Elizabeth and I had gates close to each other so we walked to our gates and waited for our planes. My plane said on time but it ended up being about 15 minutes late, no big deal. My flight plan was Minneapolis to Dallas to London. On the first leg of the journey, we were almost to Dallas but we kept going in big circles….there was bad weather in Dallas. The pilot got an alternative path but unfortunately we had circled so much that we would run out of fuel and had to land in Wichita Falls, Texas to refuel instead. We ended up sitting there for almost 3 hours and taking off around 7:40 pm. This was partly due to the fact that all arrivals were suspended to Dallas for at least an hour due to the bad weather-although it was sunny in Wichita Falls! In the end, we arrived in Dallas 4 hours late-at 8:10 pm instead of 4:10 pm! So I was convinced my flight leaving at 9:10 pm would be delayed. To my surprise when I got off the plane it said on time for my flight to London and I raced off to a different terminal to make it for boarding. When I got there it was delayed 10 minutes and then 20 minutes and I boarded at about 9:15. The plane seemed really empty but I was happy to have two seats to myself and thought it was going to be a rather pleasant 9 hour flight with room to spread out! However, for about 2 more hours people slowly but surely started filling up the seats and the plane was full. I guess they didn’t know so many people had not landed and actually waited for everyone! I would have much rather spent the time walking around the airport since the 5 hour layover I was expecting was drastically shortened and I didn’t really have much time to stretch my legs. Once we took off it went smoothly and I got maybe 2 or 3 hours of sleep, watched “How to Train Your Dragon” and completed many Sudoku puzzles. I was supposed to be the first person to arrive but due to the delays, I was second to arrive. Melissa arrived about 2 minutes later. Abby had delays as well and was coming in about 2 hours later so Helen took the three of us who had arrived to our rooms by the where the Assumption sisters in London live. Once we unloaded out bags we walked around a bit. We were close to Kensington Park and walked around there and saw Kensington Palace. Since the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death was on August 31st there were many flowers and notes to Princess Diana attached to the gates of Kensington Palace. We had a nice dinner with the sisters after Abby arrived and had an early night since we were all exhausted.

Flight Summary
1:30 board in MSP
4:55 land in Wichita Falls, Texas (due to bad weather in Dallas)
7:40 Take off
8:10 land in Dallas (original arrival 4:10)
8:20 off plane
9:15 board plane to London
11:00 leave gate
2:00 pm arrive in London (original arrival 11:25 pm)

Friday September 3
We had breakfast, packed up and left around 10. Heather is volunteering in southern England and went by train to her destination. Abby and one of the sisters went by train to Newcastle and Melissa, Helen and I went by car. We stopped along the way for lunch. The rest stop was really nice and had several stores! We got sandwiches and drinks from a small grocery store-it was fun looking at all the different choices like chicken and sweet corn!
When we got to Newcastle we had tea and treats with the sisters and met one of the brothers who lives next door to the sisters. They all seem really nice! They have nice backyards with flower and vegetable gardens. We were all anxious to see our flat so we drove over and unloaded. It is pretty spacious and we each get our own rooms which is nice, although I would not have minded sharing a room since that is what I am used to! Melissa and Abby didn’t want the room with the hot pink carpet and I actually like the hot pink carpet and flowers on the wall so there was no argument about who got that wall. One down side is that I don’t really have a window in my room. There are two small windows in the ceiling but nothing to look out of. Once we all had our rooms we rearranged the furniture to our liking and unpacked while Helen and Carolyn bought some food for dinner. After dinner we got our schedule for the next few days and talked about what we would like to see and learn about in the next few days while Helen and Carolyn are still in town (they are staying with the sisters).
After they left, we finished putting things away and decided to watch a movie. We ended up choosing “Burn After Reading” because none of us had seen it (left by a previous volunteer) but unfortunately we all agreed that it was not a very good movie. My bed is pretty nice but I had a hard time falling asleep due to the long nap I took in the car.

Saturday September 4
We got to sleep in and then started our pretty full day. We went over a bunch of information with Helen and Carolyn regarding our stipend, expectations, bus system, community, volunteer sites, shopping, and more on the schedule for the week. Then we took a nice walk around the Walker neighborhood and got to see Kids Kabin, Common Grounds, the Walker park, a post office, doctor’s office, etc. We then drove a few minutes to a road with a lot of shops. It was nice to see where we could go shopping! It is close enough that we can walk, although it might take 30 minutes or more. Charity shops are common in England and they are similar to Goodwill stores although they are smaller and there are a lot more of them. We can get a lot of decent stuff for cheap and all the furniture in our apartment came from various charity shops. We also found a gym and swimming pool (looks a bit too pricy) and signed up with the library. We can use a bunch of different libraries in Newcastle including one right down the road from where we live and one in the city centre that is open 24 hours. We had another session about conflict resolution and non-violent communication as a tool for use in our community of three or at our volunteer sites. After lunch we headed out again and went to the city centre which is the nicer part of town. We saw the Gateshead Millennium Bridge which is one of the better know sites in the town. It is a cool looking pedestrian bridge that rotates to let ships pass under it. Also, it lights up at night with different colors (we were there in the day time so we didn’t see it lit up). There is a bike path that goes along the Tyne River and apparently takes about 15-20 minutes to bike from our flat to the city centre/Gateshead Millennium Bridge. I’m excited to bike down to the city centre once we get bikes which will hopefully be later this week. The buses are fairly expensive but we will use them for big grocery trips or when the weather is nasty. We found some art galleries, a concert hall, more shops, 2 other churches we could go to (one that other volunteers have go to in the past where there is young adult group they got involved with) and got a better idea of where some things are located. Abby was really excited by one of the exhibits in the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (formerly a flour mill) because she had studied the artist and his work in school so that was neat!
Getting to walk around the city was really helpful but I still feel a bit out of place. I’m eager to get more acquainted with the city and get to know other people. It is weird knowing so few people! After dinner we were all excited to use the internet since we finally had the password and wanted to check emails and Skype with family and friends. It worked for awhile and then suddenly stopped working.

I'm off to England!

2010-08-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

I will be leaving later today for England! I will update as soon as I can upon arriving in England but it maybe a couple days since I will not be in Newcastle-upon-Tyne until Friday afternoon and I don't know if I will have Internet access right away (see wikipedia article for more information about Newcastle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_upon_Tyne).

For those who don't know, I am volunteering with the Associate Missionaries of the Assumption volunteer program. There will be two other volunteers with me from the US (Abby and Melissa). We will all work at an after school program called Kids Kabin that was started by the Assumption sisters who live in Newcastle as an "alternative to boredom which can lead to youth disorder". We can each choose where we want to work in the mornings. The place I am most interested in is called Common Ground and it is an organization that helps asylum seekers. They run a food pantry, thrift store, help the asylum seekers fill our forms, improve their English and provide other helpful services. There are also chances to work at and elementary school, a senior center or work with our supervisors to find other placements based on our interests. We will tour the sites when we get there and make decisions on where we would like to spend our time.

2009-07-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

July 12th

Yesterday was 7/11 so the store Seven Eleven was giving out free 7.11 oz slurpees. Since Seven Eleven is only 2 blocks away, we all walked there and got our free slurpees. They were small but good anyway!

This past week we emailed the author of one of the papers we read because we had a question about what was in the paper. We got a prompt reply and attached to the email was a program the author had used and it was very neat! You could draw graphs and select the information you would like to know about the graph and it would tell you! One of the choices was Energy! Unfortunately it did not give all 4 kinds of energy we are working with but it is still very cool! Even though it didn’t give the energy for all 4 kinds we are studying, it does give pieces of information we could use to calculate 2 kinds of energy. Other than that it has been the same old same old. I have found some interesting patterns but the type of matrix that the patterns fit into, Toeplitz, are really tricky to work with and I have been trying to read up on them but unfortunately I haven’t gotten anywhere and no one else in the groups knows how to work with them either. I took a break from the confusing pattern I found and found a different one but I didn’t have any time on Friday to try to get information out of this pattern - I’m hoping I can in the next week or so. The main focus of this coming week will be to tie up the loose ends that we have and work on our presentation some more.

On Friday night most of us went to the casino. I had never been to a casino before so I was excited! It was nice because since it was my first time at this casino they gave me $10! Everyone got $10 free (by signing up for their casino players club) and one girl got $20 since it is her birthday month. We spent about 2.5 hours playing penny slots and had a good time. I left with $5.07, not great but considering that I walked in with $0 I was happy! And what would a carful of college girls do with free money on a warm summer night…go to McDonald’s for ice cream treats! Yum!

Yesterday was another party at a professor’s house. This time it was at my advisor’s house. He is from India and he made us some Indian food, it was good. In the past, when students have gone to his house for the party, they stay LATE-the record is 5am! It started at 3 pm and none of us wanted to stay that late. About half the group, including me, stayed until 12:45 and we could tell he was a bit disappointed that we didn’t stay later and everyone else left earlier. I played 2 games of Monopoly, catch phrase, SET, watched a movie and chatted. It was a fun day but by 12:45 I was getting sleepy.

Have a great week everyone!

2009-07-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

July 7th, 2009

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great 4th of July!! My family came up to Mount Pleasant on last Thursday near the end of a 10 day trip they took. I didn’t have to work on Friday July 3rd and so taking advantage of the 3 day weekend we drove to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park near Empire Michigan. It was very beautiful!! The sand dunes were amazing! The scenic drive was very scenic and the short hike we went on was very nice. At one of the stops on the scenic drive, there was a 450 foot dune that went down to Lake Michigan. A bunch of people were walking down, and then back up (the hike up didn’t look fun)! Thanks to some locals we learned that if we walked down the beach about a mile, we would come to a beach and steps over the small dunes there that went to another lake and a parking lot. Mom didn’t want to climb down so she drove over to the lake and picked us up. I enjoyed the climb down and the walk down the beach.

On July 4th we enjoyed the cherry festival downtown Traverse City. Emily and I made little cherry pies. We looked around, tried samples of cherry products, enjoyed lunch and then sat down to watch the air show. I had never seen an air show before and it was amazing (although slow at times). After the air show we took a drive up one of the peninsulas and saw some more nice views. We then headed to the hotel beach and lounged around for awhile. We had a late picnic dinner in a park as we waited for the fireworks to start. It was a very nice display. It was nice seeing my family and I’m glad they came to visit! I can’t believe I only have about 2.5 weeks left! The REU is going really fast!

Now for the math. About awhile ago we all gave midterm reports. Each group made a power point type presentation and gave a 20 minute presentation with their results so far, their conjectures and what they wanted to work on for the rest of the time. I feel like our presentation went well. Our advisor had a few comments but nothing very critical, just details to fix. Of course it could be better and we will work on it more for next time. It took a bunch of work to prepare for the presentation because we had to type up everything in LaTex which took a long time, it was worth it though because everything has to be typed up by the end anyway and this way it will be a lot less overwhelming at the end. After seeing the presentation, I was just reassured that I really am glad I got the project I did. I find it really interesting. We have not had as many results this past week as we did the first few weeks but we are getting into more challenging things now so that is expected. Oh well. We still have a bunch of results and I’m sure we will have more before the project is over. We have about a week left for actual researching. Then we have to prepare our final presentation and give a practice talk. On the last Monday there will be a conference at CMU for all the REU groups in Michigan and we will present to each other. For the last 3 days we will be typing up our final report. Yikes! The time is flying by!

A few other things I’ve done for fun:
- I went to a play with two of my roommates at the CMU summer theater
-Saw fireworks the week before the 4th in Mount Pleasant
-There was a party a professor’s house (each professor in the REU program will be hosting a party at their house between now and the end)
-Went out to lunch a few times
-Several games of Mafia
-Finished reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

I know I have not covered nearly everything that has happened in the last 2 weeks so if you have any specific questions, feel free to send me an email!

Week 3

2009-06-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

June 21, 2009

A whole week has gone by since I wrote! The time is just flying by! This week we spent most of our time analyzing the catalog that we made last week. First we started out looking at theorems that have already been proved for normal energy to see if any of them held for distance, Laplacian or signless Laplacian, which we calculated and cataloged last week. We do not have any proofs for those yet but we have found many theorems that do hold for all or some of the other types of energy. Also, I found a pattern for the maximum distance energy but I have not figured out how to prove it. The professor who is working on the project with us came up with a proof for a theorem. He adapted an inequality for energy that was proved for Laplacian energy and proved it. We all checked it and tried to figure out when the equality cases held. I had an idea for how to do the proof but I knew it wasn’t all correct but I put it on the board and explained to the group what I was thinking and to see if they could see how to fix that parts that I didn’t think were correct. It was at the end of our time on Friday and no one else could see how to fix the problem areas. Oh well, the professor thanked me for sharing my idea. He said sometimes people aren’t willing to go to the board and share ideas/proofs that are not 100% correct.

There was some turbulence this week in our group. The guy in our group, Duy, has been doing the programming that helped us quicken the cataloging process. However, since he did the programming, he felt that he didn’t have to do any of the calculations for the catalog. It wasn’t hard to do the calculations since we used a computer software called Maple to do the actual calculations based on our inputs but it was monotonous since we had to do the calculations for 208 graphs. The rest of us, particularly Kate and I, did not agree with his idea of not doing any calculation. We all understand that programming takes time but we were working the whole time he was programming, fixing errors in the old numbers, so it wasn’t like we were taking a break while he worked his butt off. He didn’t understand our side of the argument and as hard as we tried to convince him, he didn’t think we understood him. We did come to an agreement (or so we thought!) that Duy would calculate half as many numbers as the rest of us because he wrote the program. The next morning when we were in the computer lab to do the calculations, he wouldn’t do any. This really hit a nerve with Kate. Duy and Kate ended up arguing again. That was early in the week and we have all moved past it but group work can really be challenging!!

For fun this week we did several things. On Tuesday night most of us went to the movie theater and saw “The Hangover”. It was funny but kind of stupid but not so stupid that it was bad. On Wednesday, it was one of the guys birthday so we had a big pot luck dinner and then a dance party. On Friday we all went out to dinner with two of the professors at a local restaurant called “Mountaintown Staton”. I wasn’t feeling adventurous so I had a chicken caesar warp and fries. That night we played apples to apples and hung out. It started raining (we were all excited for a thunderstorm!) and several of us went out and played in the rain, splashing in the puddles and watching the lightening. The rain was very refreshing. Yesterday I biked around Mount Pleasant and looked in a bunch of stores but didn’t buy anything except for a few food items. It was a nice relaxing day and I spent awhile knitting and reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. I also vacuumed our apartment for the first time since we got here! It was in desperate need of a cleaning!! Today I spent some time reading math books and other useful information. I also went to church and it was a normal mass this time, no incense or procession.

Below are a few pictures of my room and the CMU campus.

My bed and desk
My dresser

Behind the trees is Pearce Hall, where we work.

The Library

2009-06-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday-June 14th

The rest of the week we worked on the catalog and going over different theorems, proofs and papers written on the topic of Laplacian energy or energy of graphs in general. There are only a few papers on the topic because it has not been studied very much.

On Friday we FINISHED the catalog! Well, at least the first “edition”. Right after we printed a copy for each of us we found a handful of numbers that seemed off. So this afternoon I went back and recalculated everything we need for the graphs that had seemingly incorrect numbers and found the correct numbers. Also, we need to do random checks to check the overall accuracy so we will do that this coming week. But we were very excited to be done-especially Kate and I who put in the most work on the catalog out of the 4 of us working on the project.

This weekend was really fun! On Friday afternoon I went to the gym after we were done working and then made myself dinner. I had no idea what I wanted to do but someone suggested we all walk to 7-11 to get Slurpees or ice cream. So about 7 of us walked to 7-11 and got our desired treat and we walked back and sat outside enjoying our summer treats! We were all a little hyper after consuming so much sugar so we went to the playground and had a good time playing until the bugs came out. It was still pretty early so we put in Pirates 1 and then called it a night.

Yesterday I slept in until almost noon! Oops! I LOVE sleeping in but then half the day is gone!! I biked to Target to get a few things I needed and to explore the town a little bit. It was a nice and super easy bike ride! Not nearly as many hills as by my house! Then 5 of us headed down to the river for a bit. I checked out “A Thousand Splendid Suns” from the library so I enjoyed the sun and read my book. I put my feet in but didn’t actually go swimming. After dinner we were going to go to a malt shop at the edge of campus and get malts. Unfortunately, when we got there the malt shop was closed but luckily Dairy Queen was about 6 blocks away so we just went there instead! Yum! One of the girls had never been to a Dairy Queen before and she really liked it! The bikes have really come in handy! I’m so glad we were able to borrow them!!

Today I got up late again and bummed around doing things around here like laundry, taking out the garbage and recycling, fixing some numbers on the table, checking out some books from the library and going to church. The church I went to was on the CMU campus and was small so I expected it to be a normal hour long mass but it ended up lasting an hour and a half! And it included a procession around the block with the host in the monstrance as well as incense numerous times throughout mass! I was shocked! This was the first time I went to this church so I’ll see what it is like next week! It may just be a really conservative parish or today may have been a special day, time will tell! The good thing is that mass is at 6pm which works well with my tendency to sleep in! Overall, it was a nice day and went way too fast!!

More about this week and my project

2009-06-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

June 10, 2009

So let’s see, what has happened in the last few days? My group has basically been working on making a big catalog. I think I need to explain a little more about my project. I will do my best to explain it so you at least get an idea. We start with a graph, a simple graph (one that does not have any loops or double edges) and we make a matrix from it. There are lots of different types of matrices you can make. One matrix we made for each graph was an adjacency matrix.
(I couldn't get the graph to paste here so use the link to look at it)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:6n-graf.svg

For a graph, each of the dots is called a vertex and the line connecting the dots is called an edge. For an adjacency matrix, if there is an edge connecting two vertices, you put a 1 in the matrix, if there is no edge connecting the two vertices, you put a zero. Below is the matrix for this graph.

0 1 0 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 1 0
0 1 0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0 1 1
1 1 0 1 1 0
0 0 0 1 0 0

I’ll explain the first row. There is a one in the 2nd column and the 5th column because vertex one is connected to vertex 2 and vertex 5 by an edge.
One of my group members made a computer program to make the adjacency matrix so we only had to input the edges and the program made the matrix for us. Once we have the matrix, we used a math software called Maple to find the eigenvalues of the matrix. I’m not sure how to explain an eigenvalue. Once we have the eigenvalues, we take the absolute value of each and add them up which gives us the energy. Does that help?

So the last few days we have been calculating the eigenvalues and energy for the adjacency, Laplacian and distance matrices for 208 graphs, all the graphs with 1 to 6 vertices. We have a catalog that pictures all these graphs and all the graphs with 7 vertices but there are a TON of graphs with 7 vertices, over 1000, so we are starting with just the graphs with 6 or fewer vertices and eventually we hope to catalog the graphs with 7 vertices as well. Once we have all the data we will be looking for patterns, making conjectures and hopefully proving them! We will be looking at things like what happens to the energy if you add/delete an edge? It is taken longer than I expected to finish the catalog/database for the first 208 graph but I think we will finish tomorrow!

Other than that, I’ve been watching TV/movies, reading (just finished “Three Cups of Tea”), knitting, hanging out and getting to know everyone better.

2009-06-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

June 4th
Thursday morning we all went in and the first thing was to see who was in which group for the projects. Almost everyone got their first choice which was good. One of the guys who got his second choice decided Wednesday night that he actually wanted his second choice more than his first choice so it worked out! I got my first choice-“The Energy of Graphs and Matrices”. I think it is kind of funny that this ended up as my first choice and the project I got because my mom kept saying that this was the name of my project when people asked because it was the only project she saw the title of, even though there were four choices. A lot of people wanted the project I put as my first choice so we ended up with 4 people in our group, me, Kate, Amalia and Duy. Amalia and Duy are international students and are funded by their universities not the NSF like the rest of us. It is a big group so it will be interesting to see how things go. We decided to all look at the same question for a few days and see how it goes. I think we will need to split up into groups of two but we will see. We got some packets to read and some other packets with useful information that will help make our lives a lot easier. I think it is going to be a fun project and I think we will be able to come to some good conclusions. In the morning after we got our groups, we went outside and took a REU & LURE group picture. The LURE students are Central Michigan University students who work with professors for two summers on projects, there are 6 of them- 3 rising sophomores and 3 rising juniors. Also, my group got an intro to a math software called Maple that will be helpful for our project. In the afternoon we started coming up with ideas and then decided we needed to take a step back and make a database with a bunch of information so that when we come up with a conjecture it will be a lot easier to check if our idea is solid instead of having to do all the calculation when you have a million thoughts racing through your mind. So we split up the work and plan to make a spreadsheet Monday.

Oh, so after I found out I got my first choice project I was pretty excited but it didn’t stop there. Dr. Narayan, who is in charge of the program and also my project, said that there are bikes we could have for the summer if we wanted! I was so excited!! A couple people had bikes they brought and I was thinking how nice it would be to have a bike as well! So before I went back to eat lunch, one of the guys and I went and found where we could get bikes and excitedly road our bikes home. My bike is purple and it is by no means a great bike but it gets me from point A to point B, and a lot faster than walking. The bike came with a lock too which was great.

A bunch of people got bikes in the afternoon and we found out where a nice little beach/river was and took a trip there. The water was freezing! I didn’t swim but a couple people did and there were a bunch of people tubing already! I want to go tubing when it warms up, I would prefer not to freeze!

June 5th
We had to get up early! We left at 7:15 for Mackinac Island. We took the 10:30 ferry to the island and had free time until 4 when we met up as a group for dinner at an Irish restaurant and pub-although they didn’t seem to have many Irish dishes on the menu. The weather was amazing!!! We were all worried because during the week it was forecasted to rain and be chilly but it turned out to be a great day! It rained for the last half hour or so but other than that is was nice and sunny! I forgot to bring sunscreen with me so my nose got burnt. Oops. Originally some of us had planned to rent bikes and bike around the island. Then we saw it cost $7 an hour and that was too steep for most people. I would have gone for it but no one else really wanted to so we just walked. Of course that meant we didn’t go around the island since it is 8 miles around and we didn’t have that much time. We went into the visitor’s center and decided to walk to Arch Rock which was only about a mile away. I enjoyed the walk, especially the part that was through the woods! After we saw the cool rock, we were all starving so we headed back to town and got a quick lunch since we were going to have dinner in about 3 hours. Since Mackinac Island is famous for fudge, we decided to look into it. There are a TON of fudge shops on the main street by where the ferry came in. So we went into probably 10 different shops and sampled fudge as we made our way down the street. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon! We keep walking and were going to try to find the Grand Hotel but never made it; it was further than we thought it would be. Instead we sat at a beach for awhile, played on a playground and then headed back to make our fudge purchases before we had to meet for early dinner. I know I didn’t see much of the island but it was still an enjoyable day. It is hard going places with a group, especially when no one really knew what they wanted to see. The group did split up but I ended up with a fairly large group. I should have looked up more about Mackinac Island before I went and had an idea of what to do. After successfully purchasing our fudge, a half pound slice of chocolate peanut butter fudge for me, we made our way to the restaurant and order. Of course, they were out of the item I wanted-darn! Oh well, I chose a different item instead. An interesting fact is that there are no vehicles allowed on Mackinac Island instead they have a lot of horse drawn carriages. We ducked in and out of a few tourist shops as we waited to take the 6:00 ferry back to Mackinaw City. After a 2.5 hour car ride we were back in Mount Pleasant.

I can’t believe the first week is over!

2009-06-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

June 3

Over the last 2.5 days I took 42 pages of notes on the 4 projects that we could work on this summer! We had a series of talks and question and answer sessions with the professors we will work with on the projects on Monday, Tuesday and this morning. This afternoon by 2 pm we had to submit our top two choices for what projects we would like to work on and rank them #1 and #2. I will be interested in seeing how the groups end up. I think my first choice was a lot of people’s first choice so I’m not sure if I will get it. I also like my second choice so I won’t be too disappointed if I don’t get my first choice but obviously I would prefer my first choice. Also, there is one project that I am not sure if anyone will put as their first choice so I’m not sure how they would deal with that.

Tomorrow we will take a group picture and break into our research groups to get started! It is sunny today which is nice but it is still not that warm in my opinion.
On a sheet we got our first day, it says our work hours will be 9-12 and 1:30-4:30 each day, and this is what we have been doing the last few days. I like having the 1.5 hour lunch break! We have to walk back to our townhouses and make lunch and then walk back so there really isn’t much extra time but enough so I can check my email and sent one or two. When it is all said and done we have about 50-60 minutes to make our meal and eat it which is very reasonable. I’m glad we don’t have to bring our lunches with us and eat in half an hour, which I was kind of expecting since I have never had more than a 30 minute lunch break.

Also, for the first time in my life I have a room to myself. It is kinda strange but also nice, especially when just getting to know everyone else I am living with! My room is a nice size, has a big dresser with a mirror, a nice closed, desk and chair and a bed. I really didn’t know what to expect before I came but I like the set up and I have plenty of room for all my stuff! I am looking forward to having my own room at school next year too! I have always had roommates with different sleep schedules from me so it will be nice to finally not worry about being quiet when they were sleeping!

That’s all I can think of for now! I hope you are all having a great summer so far!!

Michigan REU

2009-06-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

Hi!
I thought using the same blog as I used in France would be the easiest way of giving you all a little information about my summer since I’m not at home. As some of you know, I am in Mount Pleasant Michigan, at Central Michigan University for an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program. One of my professors at CSB/SJU suggested I apply and since I didn’t get an internship I was happy to get into an REU program! Today was the first day of the program but I flew in on Saturday afternoon. That evening one of my housemates (we are living in townhomes just a few minutes’ walk from campus) took me to Target so I could get a few things I needed like a pillow and some hangers. On Sunday, once more people had arrived we took a big trip to the grocery store called Meijer. It is like a Super Target because it has food and everything else. I am living with two students who go to CMU (Central Michigan University) and two other students in the REU program. One of the girls in the others girls’ townhouse is also a French and Math double major but she is in the program for the CMU students. She seems really nice, as do everyone else but as usual, there are some people who I can see myself becoming better friends with than others.

Today was the first day of the program. We all met in the math building at 9 am. They provided bagels, coffee and orange juice for us. They also gave each of us a CMU mug, a 3 subject notebook, CMU folder and a note pad. I brought school supplies with me but I’m sure I will need more than one notebook anyway. After some intro information, we went and got ID cards so we can use the gym (normally a $30 fee to use in the summer but the REU program is paying it for us!!) and check out books in the library. It was misting this morning as we walked to campus so naturally my hair looked horrid in my ID picture. It looked nice when I left the townhouse but my hair is no match for the mist/rain, it instantly becomes fizzy and anything I had done to it in the morning disappears. Oh well I guess, it is only for two months. In the afternoon we had an introduction to two of the project we can work on. Tomorrow morning the other two projects will be introduced. In the afternoon tomorrow morning and the morning on Wednesday we will get some more information about all the projects and have time to ask questions. On Wednesday afternoon we have to submit our first and second choice projects with our reasons why we want to work on those particular projects. I liked the first project that was introduced today but not the second one. I’m excited to learn about the other two tomorrow! I found it funny that Pearce, the math/computer science building here at CMU is abbreviated PE which is the abbreviation used for the Peter Engel building at SJU where the math classes are held at SJU!

Thursday we start working on our projects and on Friday we are going to Mackinaw Island.

I forgot my camera cord at home so for now I don’t have any pictures but once I get it, I can post pictures of my townhouse and the campus.

My last blog from France!!

2008-12-12T15:21:00.001-08:00

Wow! I am leaving Cannes tomorrow morning! I can't believe it! It is sad to leave these new friends. Many of them I will see at CSB/SJU next semester but there are also a bunch that I will not see again which is sad! I am excited to go to Nantes and St. Nazaire for the next week but I am not looking forward the long day of travel with two HUGE suitcases tomorrow! I don't know why I brought so much stuff with me! If I was just going to the airport and checking the bags it wouldn't be a problem but I don't like the idea of traveling on the train by myself with two stuffed to the brim bags. My roommate is going to the bus stop with me in the morning but from there I will be on my own until 6pm when my train finally arrives in Nantes and where Emeline will meet me!

I didn't have classes this morning so I went to the beach, sat, collected some shells, looked at the sea for the last time and journaled a bit. This afternoon, Michelle, Ann and I took a little trip to Antibes. We ended up getting there later than we were planning but it worked out just great because we saw the sun setting/moon rising over the sea, it was so beautiful!! We didn't go into any museums, just walked around admiring the holiday lights and buying the last present or two.

We didn't make it back in time for dinner so we bought a sandwich at the bar and ate it while watching a movie with about half our group as we celebrated one of the girl's birthday.

Ok, it is late here and I have a long day of travel ahead of me tomorrow so I am going to bed. I still have a lot to blog about and will update it over winter break!

Last week in Cannes

2008-12-07T14:53:00.001-08:00

Hi all!

So I was planning on a longer blog tonight but the time has disappeared like normal! I will update you on my trip to Switzerland and the play later this week or when I get home. I can't believe that my study abroad trip is coming to an end! As much as I don't want to leave this amazing place, I am getting very excited to see my family and friends again and have the comforts of a home!

Things I am going to miss about France/Cannes:

-hearing/speaking French everyday

-the sea being across the street

-the cobble stone pedestrian streets

-KEBABS!!

-chocolate croissants and crepes every weekend for brunch and bread with every meal

-eating nutella often

Things I won't miss:

-the scooters that are always driving really fast

-the dog poop on the sidewalks

Things I am looking forward to in the US:

-my bed, having a couch to sit on and my fleece tye blanket

-peanut butter (so quick story-my roommate, who is from Holland, got two Reeses Peanut Butter Cups from another American student who got them in a package from home. So I was sitting on my bed doing my homework yesterday and she hold one up and asks me in a kind of digusted voice "do you like this?" well, of course I like peanut butter cups and responded with an enthousiastic "yes" and to my surprise she told me I could have it because she didn't like it!! Apparently she had taken one bit out of the other and thrown the rest away!! It was the best tasting thing I have had all weekend and I am looking forward to peanut butter and everything with peanut butter in it!!)

-other condiments like ranch dressing and BBQ sauce

-friends and family

-mountain dew-doesn't exist in France (or Europe I think)

-MILK!! we only get milk with breakfast and I'm used to drinking it with almost every meal at home and school

This afternoon Michelle and I took a study break and went to the beach. We walked along the beach collecting rocks that suddenly appeared on the beach (they weren't there earlier in the semester) and watched the sun set behind the hills/mountains. It was a very nice half hour break. My feet were freezing by the end but it was worth it!

I also took some time after dinner to start cleaning my room. My desk was unrecognizable as a desk which was the biggest hint that I really needed to do some cleaning!! My desk is nicely organized now but my closet still leaves much to be desired but I probably won't clean it since I only have a little over 5 days left in Cannes. The contents of my messy closet will slowly find their way into my suitcase before I leave.

3 tests and a final paper for Senior Seminar this week and I am free of homework/tests until the middle of January :)

This week includes a party during our last senior sem. class Wednesday night, taking the one Euro bus to Antibes on Thursday with Michelle and packing at some point in time. I also want to wander through the Christmas market downtown and journal on the beach one more time. Gosh, I need another weekend here, one free of homework but unfortunately I have to leave early Saturday morning.

2008-11-23T07:17:00.000-08:00

TREVI fountain!!

The really cool church by Michelangelo

A sweatshirt we saw in a shop...MN gophers Hockey in Rome...what are the chances of that?!?

In front of the Spanish Steps

inside the Pantheon

So finally a blog update!
Nov.7-9 ROME!!!!
I went to Rome with Michelle and Jeff, both from the CSB/SJU study abroad program. We skipped grammar class on Friday morning to make it a three day weekend. We had planned on taking the train from Cannes to Nice only to find out the day before that the SNCF was on strike! So since no one knew when the strike would be done, we decided to take the safe route and take the bus. We decided on the 1 euro bus which starts in Cannes, makes a billion stops but after about an hour and a half takes you directly to the airport. It was perfect EXCEPT that I felt horrible almost the whole way there! A jerky bus and I don’t do well together!! Let’s just say I’m not sure I would have lasted another 5 minutes on that bus! I was more than happy when we finally got to the airport. We checked in and headed to our gate to wait for our plane. Turns out some other American students from AIFS (the other American study abroad group that is at the college) were on our flight! There final destination was Athens but they had a layover in Rome. Our flight went smoothly and before we knew it, we were in Rome! We followed the directions the hostel gave us to get from the airport to the hostel. We took the train from the airport to the middle of the city and took their metro system for a few stops , walked about 5 minutes to where the hostel was supposed to be. But we were confused-it looked like an apartment…there were buttons with names next to them, where was the hostel. So we walked around the block to see if we could find it but we didn’t see anything-we were back where we started. Then we saw it, the button for the hostel on the other side of the doorway! So we checked into the hostel and headed out to conquer Rome! Right after we crossed the street Michelle thought she heard someone say here name but was like who would be saying my name in Rome?? However, the next second we see three bennies running our way. They are on the Greco-Roman CSB/SJU study abroad program and they just happened to be riding a bus as we walked across the street and noticed Michelle’s blazer sweatshirt. We walked by the Vatican and made our way to the pantheon. On our way, we saw a square with runes in it. It was surrounded by a fence and the ruins were lower than street level…upon further look, we noticed there were probably 100 cats hanging out on the ruins! It was crazy! The Pantheon was a smaller building than I was expecting but none the less very cool, I really liked the ceiling!! From here we went towards the Spanish Steps. It was a nice walk, not too far and we saw lots of fancy shops. There was a neat little fountain at the foot of the steps. We climbed up the steps and found a great view of the city! It reminded me of Sacre Coeur! The sun was starting to set and it was beautiful! We went into the church at the top, it was small but pretty. From the Spanish Steps we headed towards the Trevi Fountain. On the way we saw a neat intersection that had a fountain on each corner. Not something you see every day. We came upon the Basilica St. Maria and decided to go in although we had no idea if it was anything special or not. Turned out to be a great idea!! Besides the Vatican, this was my favorite church we visited! The outside was nothing to look at but inside it was beautiful! It was one of Michelangelo’s last works and I was a fan! There weren’t any lights on and it was getting dark so my pictures didn’t really turn out. Next stop, TREVI FOUNTAIN!!! I loved the Trevi fountain!! It was AMAZING!!! It was very intricate with lots of different pools flowing into each other, I could have sat there for an hour! We each threw a coin in and didn’t spent much time because we were all starving!!! We found a pizza restaurant and got dinner. I got a sausage pizza. We were all tired so we went back to the hostel, read a little bit for senior seminar and then went to bed.
Saturday November 8th

St. Peter's Basilica

Sistine Chapel

Castel St. Angelo

All the black dots you see are birds!!!

A pretty night shot from the Castel St. Angelo

Saturday morning=VATICAN
Our hostel was only like two blocks away from the Vatican so we got up early, grabbed a donut at a nearby bakery. We were early enough that we didn’t have to wait in line at all! We took in the magnificence of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica from the outside. We didn’t think it opened until 8:30 but we got in before that! The inside was amazing!! And, since we were early, there weren’t many other people inside which was really nice! There were mosaics that looked like paintings, cool statues, beautiful stained glass and priests saying mass at many altars around the Basilica. Going into these beautiful churches and Basilicas makes me wonder why we choose not to make our churches as beautiful these days! They are amazing!!! After we had our fill, we went around the corner and stood in our first, and really our only line of the weekend, to get into the Vatican museum. It was only like a 15 minute wait so it really wasn’t a big deal. We each saved 6 euros on the entrance fee with our ISIC card!!! It was only our second time using our ISIC cards so we were happy to make use of them. We didn’t really know where we were going and we didn’t know what all there was to see besides the Sistine Chapel so we just followed the signs pointing its direction. It took longer to get there then we expected but we saw some awesome art on the way! There was one room I really liked that had paintings and gold gilded stuff covering the whole ceiling! Well, the Sistine Chapel was very beautiful but it was REALLY crowded which I didn’t like. They also didn’t allow any picture but I took a couple anyway, sneakily that is. There was a lot more of the museum left so we kept going. There were lots of cool paintings and sculptures. Once we finished one wing, we noticed that it was raining outside. That was ok because there was still a lot of the museum to see. We wandered around a section with lots of old Roman type coffins…they were all made of white stone and with intricate designs and scenes on them. There was also a second of art from Asia and a section about the Vatican stamps and coins before it changed to the Euro. We took frequent stops and to rest our feet! It is amazing how fast your feet get tired even when wearing tennis shoes! Miraculously it wasn’t raining when we were done! It was lunch time so we found ourself a restaurant. I got a four cheese penne pasta, it was fantastic. About 10 minutes after we had sat down at the restaurant, it started to rain again! Within two minutes, there were like 5 people on the sidewalk by the restaurant trying to sell umbrellas to the passersby. It just so happened that it stopped raining before we were done eating. I brought an umbrella with me to Rome but had left it in my backpack in the hostel. Luckily, it didn’t matter! After lunch we took a little nap before heading out again. We went to Castel St. Angelo. It was really cool! We saw some cannons, catapults and cannon balls. When we were on the roof, there was the HUGEST amount of birds flying overhead! It was insane!!! No way to explain it! It was just getting dark so we had a wonderful view of the city as it was lighting up. There also happened to be a procession making its way to the Vatican with incense and all. I’m not sure what it was for though…
Next we found dinner. I tried pasta with clams because I like the pasta and clams that mom makes at home so I thought I would try the Italian version. Even though it was good, I prefer the garlicky version my mom makes. And after dinner we headed out in search of some gelato!! We didn’t have to go far and I got raspberry and chocolate…the same combo I got in Paris! It was a lot cheaper here and just as good, not sure if it was better but it was fabulous!
For some reason, there are a TON of obelisques in Rome! I bet I saw almost 10!

Colosseum!

Roman Forum

Sunday November 9th
So we got up, took the metro to the coloseo stop. They aren’t lying when they say it is the coloseo stop. You walk out of the metro and BAMB!! There’s the Colosseum! Once again, we were early enough that we didn’t have to wait in line!! No lines, beautiful sun shining in the Colosseum, it was a prefect time to visit the Colosseum. There were a few information boards around the inside of the colosseum so we got to learn a little bit about it which was nice. Before we left, I wrote down a few facts about each of the places we were planning on visiting but these boards obviously had much more information on them than what I wrote down. Once again, it was just a beautiful day! After the colosseum we went to the Roman Forum which was just across the way. Our ticket into the colosseum also got us into the Roman Forum which allowed us to bypass the line, even though it wasn’t very long, it was still nice. The Roman Forums were HUGE!! There was a ton of stuff! It was just neat walking through this area that was so important when it was in use. As I am writing this my roommate is staring out the window in fascination at the squirrel that is climbing on one of the palm trees. Apparently there aren’t many squirrels in Holland and she thinks they are very cute. I was telling her that squirrels are everywhere in the US and that most people don’t like them and she didn’t understand why. We spent a good amount of time just roaming around the Roman Forum because there was just so much to see! One thing that we wanted to see was the Circus Maximus, which was right next to the roman forum and where chariot races were held. However, there was nothing to suggest its former use, it was just a green patch of land and when we walked by it was being used for some type of military carnival or something. We were all hungry so we found a restaurant to eat our last meal in Italy. I had a plain cheese pizza but it was good. We did a little shopping on our way to the train station, just got some postcards and such. We got to the train station a little earlier than we had to but we just decided we would hope on the train and get to the airport a little early since there wasn’t anything nearby for use to go see quickly. As we were walking through the train station, another Bennie who is on the Greco-Roman trip stopped us and said hi. None of us knew her but Michelle was wearing her blazer sweatshirt again so we were easily identifiable as bennies/johnnies. We got to the airport just fine and found our gate. We realized we hadn’t taken a picture of the three of us in Rome so we decided to take one in the airport…better than nothing I guess! We all had a lot of reading to do so we found our gate and took out our books. It was time to start boarding so we got in line but after standing in line for about 15 minutes we realized that they had changed the boarding time to 30 minutes later. Oh well, we just sat down again and read some more. In the end, it ended up being delayed about an hour and 15/30 minutes. It didn’t matter because we didn’t have anywhere to be. As we were waiting for the plane we noticed that someone had broken a bottle of wine that they must have bought at one of the airport shops. A janitor came to clean it up. He proceeded to unroll almost a whole roll of paper towel (the ones who have in a public restroom) and put it on the spill. This really disgusted me as after he wiped it up with the paper towel, he proceeded to mop the area, why not use the mop in the first place!!! It just didn’t make sense to me!
All in all, it was a fabulous trip!
Since Rome, things have gotten a lot busier here! I have had stuff to do constantly! The next two weeks are going to be insane! The vast majority of our finals, papers and projects are due the week of Dec. 1-5. This is so the profs and give us grades before we leave on the 13th, and make up the certificate they give us. The whole college closes down after the 13th for winter break.
One piece of drama that happened this past week has to two with the play. The director of the college is into theater and each year he writes one or two plays and whoever wants to, can be in the play. Well, this year there are 17 of us in the play. With all the time we spend in classes it is often difficult to find time to practice. Put on top of that people traveling and sometimes leaving Thursday afternoon to make it a long weekend. On Tuesday we were trying to set dates and times for the rest of the rehearsals before the play is performed on Dec. 4th and 5th. Well, Patrick got fed up with us and decided to call off the play! He told us we weren’t taking it seriously and we were just acting like tourists, not students. We were all shocked and upset since we had been practicing and devoting practically all our free time to play rehearsals. We wrote him a letter and a schedule with all the days we had left and what scenes could practice when and it turns out that there are very few days where only a few scenes can practice. The next day during our 15 minutes break, a couple people went and give these to Patrick. He said he would think about it. By the time we were done with grammar, he had all the practices for this week written on the white board outside his office. I’m pretty nervous about it, it is less than two weeks away!

Pont du Gard

Last weekend we took a group trip to Avignon and Arles! It was fun but really fast. We left Friday after lunch and took a coach bus to Avignon. It took quite awhile to get there but I slept for at least half the ride. We went to the Pont du Gard right way. This is the famous three level aqueduct just outside of Avignon. It was really cool! Our bus driver was really nice and he told us a little bit of history. Apparently no cement was used to make the aqueduct except at the very top where the water flows; it is just stone on top of stone! I’m amazing that is has lasted so long! When we were walking to the aqueduct I understood why my grammar prof told us to bring a scarf! It was extremely windy!!! It was the mistral, the really strong wind that blows in this area of France. An interesting fact is that the mistral blows is groups of 3 so either it was be blowing for 3,6,9…days, nothing in between. So we fought this strong wind the whole weekend! We then went to our hostel and ate dinner. It wasn’t really late but we all stayed in seeing as we didn’t know where anything was in Avignon and we wanted to get to bed early so we would be awake and ready for the next day.

Pont d'Avignon

Palais des Papes

The Cafe in the Van Gogh painting below

On Saturday the first thing we did was take a tour of the Pont d’Avignon. There isn’t much left of this famous bring. When it was built, it was the only bridge between Lyon and the sea! It had 22 arches and it crossed two parts of the river and the island area in between. Also, on one side of the bridge was France and the other side wasn’t France yet which I thought was really interesting. We sang “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” sur le pont d’Avignon (=on the Avignon bridge) which was fun! Then we went to the Palais des Papes (Pope’s Palace). It was interesting to learn about when there were two Popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome. But the building itself wasn’t all that interesting to me. There was some cool parts but it wasn’t stunning like many of the other places we have visited. The view from the top was very nice tough. We had about 45 minutes of free time to have lunch and then we got on the bus for Arles. Our bus driver took us on a walking tour showing us several places where Van Gogh painted- he painted a lot of paintings in Arles even though he wasn’t there very long. We went into an arena that like the Pont du Gard, was made by putting stone on top of stone, no cement in between. Once again, we got a great view when we climbed up to the top of one of the tower that was added later than when the arena was built. We then had almost two hours to explore on our own. It was a nice town. We boarded the bus and went back to our hostel. We then had about an hour before we left for dinner. It was easier to walk than to take the bus so, despite the cold, we all walked to the restaurant. It was a good but big dinner! They gave an appetizer, an entrée, bread, ice cream that tasted homemade and then the lady came out with a lemon pie type dessert. I was stuffed!!! Back in the hostel we played a couple games of Mafia, read a little bit and went to bed.

Cathedral d'Images-blurry but gives you the idea

fighting against the mistral!!

santons

On Sunday we ate breakfast, boarded the bus and headed out for Les Baux, another town. Our first stop there was the Cathedral d’Images. It was this area cute out of the limestone hills in which they show videos. The one that was showing was about Van Gogh, it was really neat seeing many of his painting blown up and projected on the walls! After the museum we went into the town and had some free time to find lunch before meeting up at the chateaux. Michelle and I walked around, did some shopping, stopped in the santon museum (it was cool because we had just learned about santons in our societe fancaise class! They are figurines for a manger scene-but they in the Provence area they add more than just Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Magi, they add towns’ people and make it more personal). So we each were given audio guides for the chateaux (well, what is left of it) and were set free to explore. It was pretty neat but most of us didn’t end up listening to much of the audio guide. It was SUPER windy which made it kinda hard to hear. It was more fun just exploring anyway. There were several places you could climb up and boy was the wind strong!! I’d have to say the wind made it much more exciting. When we were on the top of the ruins, you could see all the way to the sea! It was cool! After the chateaux we went back to Cannes.
This past Friday I went in search of Hotel La Madone, a hotel that was run by the Otten family (family friends or actually family, I never remember!). Uncle Dave had given me pictures and information about this hotel before I left. He stayed at it when he was in Cannes years ago. Well, it is too far away from the college so I took the bus. I was excited to see that there was a stop that would drop me off right by where the hotel was. Well, I was walking around trying to find it. There was like no one around and all it looked like was apartment buildings. Finally I saw a nice looking older man walking down the street and decided to ask him about it. He said he remembered the name but that is has been gone for at last 15 years now. Well, I guess there was no way for me too see if the Otten family still runs the hotel because it doesn’t exist. It was a beautiful afternoon and I decided to walk back to the college. Where the hotel used to be was up in the hills a little bit so I made my way down to the sea and walked along the main street that brought me into the middle of Cannes. I walked down my favorite pedestrian street, stopped in a few shops, the post office and made it back to the college in time to do a little homework before dinner. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been off campus much so it felt really nice to stretch my legs and spend a lazy afternoon in town.
Sorry for the lack of posting lately. The last week I’m here I will have more time and I will share more pictures with all of you over winter break as well.

Where did the nice weather go!?!?

2008-11-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

So I think it will be a common theme of once a week updates for the rest of the semester.
Last Saturday October 25
I went on an excursion with the college to a town named Cassis. We took one of the schools vans so there was the guide and 8 students. I was the only one from CSB/SJU which I thought was cool. My roommate went with as well, the rest: two Swiss-German girls, a girl from Norway, a girl from Germany and an American girl and her aunt that who was visiting her! It is about 2 hours west of Cannes by car. The ride was kind of long but between napping and watching the scenery, it wasn’t bad. It is a neat little town on the sea. Like everyone town on the sea, it has a cool port and some fun shops. We had free time and wandered around the town, ate lunch on the beach, wandered into a book store and met back up for a boat ride at 1:30. On the boat ride, we saw the white rock cliffs that Cassis is famous for. There were pretty cool and the water was more turquoise here than anywhere I’ve seen while in France. I saw a bunch of people rock climbing and hiking around when we were on the boat ride. It made me really want to go rock climbing!! The other Laura got information about a rock climbing place in Cannes but we haven’t made it there yet! I hope we find the time soon! After the boat ride we had some more time to look around before heading back to the college. It was a really relaxing day which is exactly what I needed! We just got to take in the nice town at a leisurely pace, go on a nice boat ride and get back in time for dinner!

On Sunday October 26th, I went to Ile St. Honorat with Michelle. Ile St. Honorat is just a 15/20 minute boat ride from Cannes. I almost wasn’t going to go because I had a lot of homework and other stuff to work on but I decided to go and I’m really happy that I went!!! We spent about 3 hours on the island which was the perfect amount of time! We just chose a direction and continued until we had gone around the whole island! There isn’t a whole ton to see on the Island, 5 chapels, an old monastery and the current one. However, it was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day and had a great time! Next to the second chapel that we came across was a cannon furnace! Totally wasn’t expecting to see a cannon furnace-well, I didn’t know they existed but that’s beside the point. The coast line was rocky I love! Michelle and I made a couple stops on our journey around the island to sit on the rocks and just relax with our feet in the water. We saw some jelly fish, small crabs along with a variety of small fish.
The old fortified monastery was really cool! There was room after room (with nothing in them) and great view after great view! We spent a little bit of time on the top just admiring the beauty of the island and the sea around us! Basically, it was another relaxing and wonderful day!

So we ran into Eeyore's house!

On Sunday night, I booked a plane ticket and hostel in Rome! I am officially going to Rome Nov. 7-9th! I am going with Michelle and Jeff, who are both from CSB/SJU! I’m really excited!
This week the weather had been horrible! Cold and rainy almost every day!! Yuck!! Our director went to Italy with her family this week because her girls didn’t have school so we didn’t have senior seminar this week!!! It was really exciting to finally have a class canceled since we only get one day off this entire semester!!! Normal French schools, and the French students who go to this college didn’t have school last week but we did! I really wish we had had the week off! I could have gone somewhere and escaped the rain! We figured that it is because most people who come here only stay for a month or so and therefore they don’t need the week off. They just pay for the weeks they want and come. Not having a break makes it easier for people who aren’t staying the whole semester to come. I’m sure it is totally a business reason because I’m sure the profs would love the time off!

I skipped my phonetics class on Tuesday (October 28th) because for some reason I felt horrible after lunch. I had a bad headache and was really cold so I just napped until I was supposed to have class. I was feeling pretty much better but decided not to go to class and just stay in my room and take it easy. I figured a little more rest would probably be a good idea.
More theater this week, I got two more scenes worth of lines and now I really need to work on memorizing!!!!!!!! It is going well but it isn’t easy! Patrick is writing the last two scenes this weekend so by the end of next week I should have all my lines for the whole play. Yikes!

Halloween was yesterday. I didn’t bring Halloween clothes besides toe socks so I wore those all day. There were only 4 people in my grammar class, one girl went home for her sister’s wedding and the other 3 went to Italy for the weekend so we watched a movie. It was pretty good but not great and it was cold in our classroom! Most people didn’t show the Halloween spirit until night time. One of the girls from CSB came up with the idea of being a rainbow so 6 of us each picked a color, I was purple, and together we made the rainbow! It was a creative idea and then no one had to go out and buy a costume (and no one would have wanted to because of the rain!). We hung out in the bar on campus playing cards and talking until it closed at 10:30. I had all intentions of going out but it was cold and wet and raining off and on and I didn’t feel like it anymore so I didn’t go out. Ashley and Trevor didn’t feel like going out any more either. We had heard that the water was really high/the road had flooded so we wanted to go see what the sea was like. Miraculously it wasn’t raining and we went across the street to the beach (we could tell that the road had flooded but it wasn’t flooded anymore). It was CRAZY how high the water was and how high the sand was pushed up! My camera batteries were dead so I didn’t have a camera last night or else I would have taken pictures! There is a cement/rock wall at the back of the beach that is normally really high but now we could climb over it if we wanted and the water comes within a few feet of the wall instead of being way out! We went out on some rock and just watch the waves crashing and spraying, it was SO COOL! Then we headed back to the college and watched a movie. Not the most exciting Halloween ever but it was still good.

Today (November 1st!!!!!!!!!!!)
I can’t believe it is November!! Crazy!! I slept in, went to brunch (Yum!) and have been doing homework most of the day. I went to the beach for a few minutes with Michelle because she wanted to take some pictures to send to her hockey team, they have their first game today, and played some volleyball but other than that it had been reading “Atlas Shrugged” and other homework. Well, I better get back to the homework!

What a wonderful life!

2008-10-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Lyon and Annecy Trip

We left on Friday (October 10th) afternoon after lunch. The train ride took about 4 hours. Unlike the other trains we have taken this one was really warm! So I was pretty much miserable, hot with a headache and almost nauseous. Yep. Trains are not my favorite mode of transportation. Needless to say I was very excited when we finally got off the stuffy train. In a matter of 15 minutes I was feeling SO much better and ready to take on Lyon. We had to take Lyon’s version of the metro to get from the train station to a stop near our hostel. There were two bad things about our hostel : 1) at the top of a big hill!!! 2) no towels…our director stayed here earlier this summer and they gave her a towel then so she told all of us we didn’t need to bring a towel, the solution= an extra bed sheet became our towel. Other than that it was great. We had a shower in our room (but the water was COLD!), nice bunk beds and a really nice view of the town of Lyon. We got settled in and then walked down the hill and a few blocks to a restaurant as a group. Their specialties were pig products. We got the three course meal where we could choose an appetizer, main course and dessert. I got an onion tart for the appetizer and it was really good! I chose the chicken and rice in a mushroom sauce for the entrée (I know, it wasn’t pig). It was ok but nothing amazing. I guess I should have gone for pig in a pot complete with feet, ears and tail….it would have been an adventure for sure! For dessert I had fondant au chocolate. It was like a fudgy piece of cake and it was delicious! After eating our fill, we walked around the old part of town near our hostel for a few minutes and then decided to go back to the hotel for a relaxing evening. Some people played cards but I chose to read a book.

On Saturday (October 11th) morning we got a tour of the old part of Lyon, the area that we were staying in. It was our group and the tour guide which was nice. But the lady spoke in English which actually upset me quite a bit. Why would she give us the tour in English when we are all here to learn French?!?! It just didn’t make sense to me. Oh well, it was interesting. We say lots of old buildings, some of the 200ish small statues on the corners on buildings, the different window styles through the ages, the Trabouls, the St. Jean cathedral and more. It was a good way to start out the day. Trabouls are a network of hidden alleys that take you from one street to the next. There are doors that look like they would go to a house or shop but you open it and normally it would go into a little courtyard area and then turn into a hallway/alley. When the Nazis occupied Lyon during WWII, the people of Lyon used the trabouls to escape the Gestapo often. They say that the trabouls saved a ton of their lives so they are pretty important! Inside the St. Jean cathedral is an amazingly cool solar clock that has been working since way back in the day. I can’t remember when it was made but it was a long time ago. Also, the face on the clock is oval, not circular so that mean that the hands are telescoping, even more complicated than normal! Then we took the funicular (a lift up the hill) and went to a different church. There were some AMAZING mosaics inside this church! All the ways were covered in mosaics or other ornate decorations! It was so amazing and beautiful! From there we went to some Roman ruins that were just discovered 60 years ago. There was a museum but we didn’t go in, we just looked around the ruins and were set free to go shopping or to a museum of choice. I decided to go to the Holocaust museum with a bunch of people. It was quite a ways away but we decided to walk anyway. Along the way we stumbled upon this circus type thing going on in a town square area. There were tigers (in cages), a person on stilts, people doing crazy routines, etc. After watching for a bit we headed on. On the way we saw a cool fountain and one of the two rivers that run through Lyon. When we finally got there, we learned that it didn’t open until 3. Luckily it was 2:30 so we didn’t have too long to wait. Two other girls and I decided to see if there were any cool shops to check out in the mean time but we found nothing except for some huge potted pine trees. The museum was pretty cool but it was more general information about Nazis/concentration camps during WWII instead of specifics about what happened in Lyon like we were expecting. None the less, I’m still glad I went. After the museum we headed back towards our hostel. We stopped along the river and watched some swans swim by and fed them some crackers that I had in my bag. We stopped at a bookstore and I bought a French dictionary...somethinge that I had been meaning to buy for awhile. We split up into 3 groups for dinner, our director had made reservations at 3 restaurants run by a famous French chef whose name I don't remember. I went to L'Ouest. We were each given 30 euros to spend and we would just pay our director back if we went over. I went over, I couldn't decided what I wanted so I got more than I needed. I started out with a ceasar salad. We don't have many dressing options at the college and it sounded really good, and it was so I'm glad I got it. Then for the main dish I had risotto and lamb which was good as well. The dessert was amazing though. It was called foundant au chocolat like the night before but this was the real deal. A tall warm brownie looking thing covered in powdered sugar and English cream that when you took a spoon to it oozed chocolate!!! Yum! I left absolutely stuffed! Some people were very adventurous in their food choices but I didn't really try anything strange.

Sunday morning was free time. I went up to the Roman ruins with Laura and Michelle after breakfast and read for a little while. Then I headed down near the river to see if there were any shops open. There weren't many open but I managed to find a Tabac that was open and bought a postcard. Then I walked through the food market on one side of the river and then through the art sale on the other side before grabbing a Kebab and hiking up the hill to grab my bag and meet the group to get on the train for Annecy. Oh, I also went to church at St. Jean cathedral. It was much easier to follow along and understand this priest than the priest at the church at the college. I really liked this mass, there was actually music, the space was beautiful and it wasn't all old people (seriously Michelle and I are the only people under the age of at least 60 who go to church at the church on the college campus). There was a whole cub scout pack at mass and the alter boys were from the pack.

Annecy (October 12-13)
We got to Annecy on Sunday afternoon. Our hostel was about a half hour walk from the train station and no jock, most of it was uphill but the last hill was the worst! It was so steep! What’s with hostels on the top of a hill?!?! Once we got settled in, we had 2ish hours until dinner. Michelle, Neva, Jeff and I went down to the lake which was right down the hill from our hostel. It was really pretty and we saw a bunch of swans. The water in the lake in Annecy is some of the clearest and purest in all of Europe! It was really clear! Annecy is only 1 hour by bus from Geneva. It was GORGEOUS and I wish we had spent more time here! We wander along the water’s edge and around a park and decided it was time to head back. After a filling dinner I read a bit and then went out with some people. It was really quiet; there was hardly anyone out at all! But it was a Sunday night in a smaller town so I guess it wasn’t really surprising. There was only one bar open that we saw but we decided not to go to it and just walked around the old part of town enjoying the night time view. On our way back we stopped a grocery store, cherry coke and a candy bar for me. Then we played cards and were all in bed before midnight. Before we went to bed, a couple other girls agreed to get up and go to breakfast earlier so we could get an earlier start to the day since we had to be at the train station by 2. However, it was only me and one of the guys from our group who actually ended up getting up early. When everyone was FINALLY ready (I am constantly amazed by how long it takes some people to get ready in the morning) I headed out to go hiking and try to find a few points of interest. We went hiking for about an hour. It was really pretty! It reminded me of the woods at St. John’s on the way to the chapel. It actually looked like fall here unlike in Cannes and it made me really happy because I love the fall colors at home! Even though we were liking the hiking we decided to try to find out way to an old chateau we had heard about. We didn’t really know where we were but just took a road that seemed to be in the right direction. It took us to this cool church that we had seen sitting at the top of a hill the day before…we actually wanted to find it if possible so we were pleasantly surprised when we saw it! After taking a few pictures we walked down the road and tried to look for the chateau on a map on the side of the road but couldn’t see it. I just suggested that we keep walking. At the next intersection there was a sign pointing us to the chateau, talk about perfect! The chateau was cool but nothing super cool. There was an aquarium part, a bunch of art and a nice view so I’m glad we stopped. We headed back to the hostel, picked up our bags and then walked into town. We did a little shopping, took daytime pictures and sat down for lunch. It was a pizza restaurant and I decided to try a Kebab pizza. Kebab stands are EVERYWHERE in France but I had never seen Kebab pizza before. It was tasty but I should have split it with someone, I couldn’t finish it…oh well. It was time to head towards the train station. We stopped at Monoprix and picked up food for the train and another store or two on the way. We made it to the train station on time which is always a plus! So I had basically given up being able to do anything productive on trains but decided to try reading anyway. To my great surprise, I was actually able to read and I read for most of the train ride back! Thankfully I was able to read or else I would have gotten a lot less sleep during the week! I really don’t understand how I was able to read this time and not the other times?!? Because there really was no chance before, I felt horrible and this time I was totally fine! So weird! We got back at like 10 pm and walked back to the college. I was exhausted from all the walking up the hills we had done during the weekend!
This week (October 13-17):
We missed class on Monday due to our weekend trip. Tuesday and Friday I had phonetics again and I am still enjoying this class. On Thursday I had a test in French civilization and I think it went really well. We had 3 questions that we had to answer but there were multiple choices, like for the first questions we had to describe what 2 out of the 5 acronyms listed mean. It was nice having options and there were no surprises which is always nice! Class schedules came out and it was a HUGE struggle for me to figure out what classes to take. I finally figured out what to take thanks to many people’s advice and help! I took a test in grammar class on Friday as it was the last day of the session however the prof didn’t collect it! What was the point of that?!?! We corrected it together and then just kept it. Huh? Didn’t make sense to me! Also, I’m frustrated because our class is staying together, no one is changing classes. The other Laura and I asked our prof if we could change classes and she said no, we are in the right level but some of the other students in the class should be in a lower level. If my speaking improves, she said maybe in a week or so I can change because my grammar is really good but speaking is 50% to them. I feel like my grammar class isn’t pushing me enough. The other Laura and I talked with our director and she is going to see what she can to do to get us moved to a different class. Also, if we want the class to count when we go back to CSB, we need to be in a higher level by the time we leave but the way things are going, that might be hard! However, Jean, our director said that she would make sure we get credit no matter what happens with the classes here. Not that the class has been a breeze, there have certainly been some challenging parts, but I want to be moving faster and to be in a class with people who are motivated as well.
6 Quirks
I was tagged by my cousin Erin so now I’m supposed to tell you all 6 quirks I have.
1) Before going to bed, the socks come off, and I put lotion on my hands and feet. Also, chapstick is a must! Even if my hands don’t feel dry during the day, as I’m going to bed I have a sudden urge to put lotion on my hands and feet….weird, I know.
2) I have to take notes in pen! No pencil! And I prefer to write in colors and alternate the colors I use so that two class periods in a row are not written in the same color. That way it is easy to tell where one day starts and stops and my notes are much more interesting to look at than if I had written in just black or blue!!
3) I don’t ever ever ever hit the snooze button! I set my alarm for the latest possible time and actually get up when it goes off. I don’t understand the snoozing concept at all! It just makes your last hour or half hour of sleep interrupted with the periodic beeping instead of being restful like it is supposed to be.
4) I’m a night owl. Most people like to go to bed around or before midnight…my midnight is 2 am. If I could, I would stay up till about 1:30 or 2:00 most nights but due to classes in the morning I go to bed earlier. But seriously, midnight no longer seems like the time to wrap things up for the day.
5) Chocolate is not a sometimes food, it is a daily food. A day without chocolate is not a good day. At school, there is always some dessert available that has chocolate in it and here in France I’ve been able to find some cheap but tasty chocolate bars or cookies to have in my room in case the dessert is yogurt or fruit.
6) Orange juice gives me a stomach ache so my juice of choice is grape.
So I meant to put this up LAST week but I didn’t and now another week has passed. What happened this week….I’ll start with last weekend (October 18-19).
A group of people from the CSB/SJU group went to Marseille on Saturday but I decided to stay in Cannes and have a more relaxing weekend. I had a bunch of homework to do and didn’t want to have to rush through it. I took the opportunity to sleep in later than normal on Saturday and didn’t go to brunch until almost noon! On Sunday night I watch “Les Bronzés Font Du Ski” with my roommate and another girl. It is a French comedy that I got from Emeline (my pen pal) for my birthday. There were no subtitles so at times it was we didn’t understand what they said but we could still tell what was going on because of the actions. It was REALLY funny! We were laughing the whole time!
On Monday (October 20th) our director sat in on the class that is 2 levels ahead of the class I’m in (there isn’t one one level ahead). Afterwards she told me and the other Laura that she thinks our prof is much better and that we could possibly learn just as much in the class we are in and basically said we shouldn’t move classes but would ask our teacher to movie some of the students down. So on Tuesday after class a couple of the students in our class were told that they needed to move to a lower level. They were shocked and unhappy but I talked to one of the girls the next day and she actually liked the new class better, I’m glad! I think it has made some difference without them in our class, we can move a little faster. Also, on Monday I started theater class. It started awhile ago for a bunch of people but I didn’t get a role until Monday. I had rehearsal on Monday and Tuesday evening. It is going to be really challenging because I’m not a loud person but it has been fun too! The gist of the play is that there is a doctor and he has group sessions (like AAA) for people with OCD type behaviors. My character is in love with the doctor so she keeps “getting” a new OCD behavior and has to come back and back. I had a 1500 word paper due on Thursday for French Civilization. I started it on Sunday and so I just had to proofread and print it on Wednesday night. Printing is always interesting. First they didn’t have any more paper so I had to go find a friend who had extra (you have to buy the paper in 10 page increments from the library but for some reason they are often out). Then the printer wouldn’t print. Not all the computers were turned on and for some reason or another the computer to the right of the printer has to be turned on in order for the printer to work. The girl working in the library didn’t know what was wrong but luckily another girl who works in the library happened to walk in 5 minutes later and helped us figure it out! Thursday night we had a really heated discussion about the movie we had to watch for class, “Death and the Maiden”. The movie was about the torture and disappearing that happened in Chile during Pinochet’s leadership. The movie took place like 10/15 years after these occurrences and focuses on a women who was taken hostage and tortured and then he torturer comes to her house one day. He has no idea it is her house, it just drove her husband home because he got a flat tire but due to his voice and sayings, she knew it was him. What she does after is what we discussed and we had to write a response saying whether what she did to him was ethic or not and why. As I said, the discussion got pretty intense but I would say it was probably one of the better discussions of the semester.
Yesterday (October 24th): I had another test in grammar. It went ok but not as good as the tests I’ve taken. I’ll find out the score on Monday. I had phonetic again this afternoon and then I took an hour and a half nap…it was WONDERFUL!!! After the much needed nap I walked to the post office to buy some stamps, use the ATM and pick up few snacks at the grocery store. All these three places are at the same intersection so it is perfect! I was interested to see if the grocery store had any Halloween candy or decorations since it is such a big deal in the United States. However, there was only one small display with generic gold foil wrapped chocolates that had pumpkins on some of the wrappers. What I saw next almost made my jaw drop! Just around the corner, a huge display of giant chocolate SANTAS!!! And SNOWMEN!!! And a wide assortment of Christmas/holiday chocolate boxes! I knew Christmas stuff comes out really early in the US but I didn’t know it came out SO soon in France! For those of you in the US, has Christmas stuff started appearing in stores?
I went on an excursion today but I think I’ve already written enough so I’ll write about that in a few days.

I love the sea!!

2008-10-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

This week was pretty normal. Classes, homework and other activities quickly filled up my week and now I don't know where the time went!

On Tuesday I decided to do my homework on the beach. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the bright sunshine was making the water glisten, it was perfect! Also, since it is now October, there is hardly anyone on the beach. I prefer this to the crowds on the beach when we first got here! The warm sun, the sound of the waves, not enough sleep the night before and 50 pages of reading quickly put me to sleep and I had a nice nap on the beach. I have recently fallen back into my habit of staying up late. I’m a night owl and am often very productive at night but it makes for a very difficult morning! It normally works out at CSB/SJU because I have been able to avoid early morning classes but I don’t have a choice here. At the last minute, I learned that there was room in the phonetics class that was starting Tuesday. There is enough money in the study abroad budget for all of us to take the phonetics class without paying-normally it costs 43 euros but our director figured it out that there was enough money for us to take phonetics if we wanted. Originally I wasn’t going to be able to take it until November because all the October sessions were filled but then they added another class on Tuesday afternoon. It is a one hour class, once a week for four weeks. I really had no idea what to expect and was excited to see what the class was going to be like. I walked into class and sat down at the desk the teacher told me to sit at. A few minutes later when everyone else had arrived (there are only 6 people in the class), she told us to open up our desks. Inside where personal recording systems equipped with a headphone and microphone combo that made us all look like pilots and the tape/recording device. We all put the headphone/micro combo on and the teacher did the same. When she talked we could all hear her. She started our tapes and read some phrases and we repeated them. With our big headphones on, we couldn’t hear anyone but the prof and our own voice. Once we had gone through several pages of exercises, the teacher rewound the tapes and we listened to them so we could hear the difference between the prof and ourselves in terms of pronunciation. She would listen into our tapes and stop it if we were saying something wrong and have us repeat it until we got it right. Then we did some tongue twister type sentences one at a time without the headsets. It was a very good hour!
Wednesday was a full day with grammar and cinema. Another person joined our class so we are up to an astounding 4 people in the class! I have really been enjoying this class! It is cool to learn about the techniques and history and then apply it to some video clips! I never realized how much thought and work went into each scene of a movie and am starting to see that cinema is an art form!
Today I had a quiz in grammar and I think it went well. After lunch and checking emails, I had 3.5 hours until my next class. I had been itching to spend some time at this rockier beach that I run by but have never stopped at. So I took the opportunity of sun+open period of time+simple homework to go check it out. It is almost exactly a 15 minute walk from the college but it doesn’t seem that long due to the fact that you are walking along the sea the whole way. Once I arrived I checked out my options and planted myself atop a large rock and did my grammar homework. Once the homework was completed, I ditched the flip flops and walked around on the rocks and watched the waves and sailors in the distance. It was beautiful, peaceful and exactly what I was looking for! I have no doubt that I will go back there soon (and probably pretty often for the rest of the semester)! After spending some time on the beach, I headed back towards the college and continued on the Leader Price (got some snacks for the train ride tomorrow) and the post office to replenish my stamp stock.

Then I hurriedly read a reading for senior seminar and went to French civilization which was at a later time today because the art history class took a trip to a museum in Nice and needed extra time.

I also got my package from Emily today (my bday present :))...when we have mail, our name gets put on the electronic message board and then we can pick it up in the office just to the right of the board.

Another excited thing I did today was fill out my absentee voting ballot!!

The pictures just don't do it justice!

Tomorrow I leave on a group excursion to Lyon and Annecy, I’m really excited!

Aix-en-Provence and 21st birthday!

2008-10-05T08:46:00.000-07:00

Saturday September 27th
We took a group trip to Aix-en-Provence. We took a big coach bus, like the one we took the Monaco and Eze. It is normally a two hour drive to Aix-en-Provence so I was glad that we took the coach bus. However, there was an accident on the road going to Aix-en-Provence so it took us 3 hours to get there! As a result we got an hour less of free time while in Aix. When we got off the bus, we took a walking tour as a group. We got off on Cours Mirabeau which is the biggest and probably most famous street in Aix. It is lined with shops and has several fountains down the middle of it. Actually, there were a lot of cool little fountains scattered throughout the whole town. We went by the city hall, a cathedral, some markets and some old roman bath ruins (I think??). Then we were set free. I wandered around with the other Laura from CSB and two other girls who are not from CSB, I think one was Swiss and the other German but I can’t remember exactly. They are both very nice. We ended up just wandering around the streets since none of us had anything in mind that we really wanted to do. It was fun and I bought a cool keychain at this store that has all super brightly colored and fun stuff. We didn’t have much time so we basically wandered in the direction of our meeting spot. We got free samples of snuggle-there were people handing them out with coupons. We were a little early back so we just sat down on a bench and people watched before getting back on the bus. I was told that Aix is a very student city with lots of college students studying there. I also think that Aix is where CSB/SJU used to have their study abroad program before moving it to Cannes. It was a nice town with lots of old winding cobble stone streets and it isn’t as busy as Cannes but I’m glad we are in Cannes, I love being near the sea! Once back on the bus, we drove to the edge of the town to one of Paul Cezanne’s studios. It was the studio where he spent the last 6 years or so of his life. It was a small two story building surrounded by woods. We had to wait to get the “tour” so we wandered around the woods (there were many paths leading to various spots that would have a bench or a little clearing). I finished up my bag lunch and took advantage of the free bathroom! We couldn’t find one in Aix and most of us were very excited! We finally got our tour but they were running late and there was a big tour group who was impatient and had an appointment. We were there first so we got to have the tour first but since there were running late, the lady giving us the tour talked really really really fast and was using some art terminology that I didn’t understand. His studio was only one room. We were supposed to look at the items around the room and try to see if we recognized them from any of his paintings. It was cool and I felt rushed. I would have like to spend more time looking around. Oh well. Then we hiked up to the top of the hill to look at a mountain that Cezanne painted several times. I don’t know the name of it but I’m glad we took the hike to see it. Since we had to travel so far, it seemed like a really quick trip. We got back on the bus and headed back to Cannes. I took a nap and I think most that most people did the same.

I was expecting to see fields of lavender on the way to Aix but it was the wrong time of year and all we say were vinyards.

Sunday September 28th
Since I hadn’t done much homework this was my day to get down to business. I sat outside and did senior seminar readings while attempting to do laundry. There are only 3 washing machines for the whole college and it seemed like everyone had decided to do laundry today! I was annoyed! I hadn’t done laundry in a long time and really wanted to do it! I kept checking to see if there were any free machines and FINALLY there was one. I put my stuff in and all was good. I even used the snuggle sample I had gotten the day before. Then the problem was the dryers. For some reason there are three washing machines and only two dryers…how did they figure that was going to work?!? So I had to wait for a dryer. This was turning into a much bigger and longer process than I was expecting or had time for! Now I really understand and appreciate the laundry sign up sheets at CSB!
Tuesday September 30th
My 21st birthday!!!! It was weird celebrating my birthday with no family, especially Emily! While I was still sleeping, my roommate put up a Joyeux Anniversaire sign and some balloons. It was a nice surprise when I woke up! Michelle gave me a card before we went to breakfast and Maisha gave me a bracelet that matched my outfit perfectly! I really like it! They sang happy birthday in my grammar class…but it wasn’t your normal happy birthday…one of the girls wanted to do what she did in her high school French class when they had a birthday. It involved me standing in the middle and everyone else standing in a circle around me...they walked and sang switching directions with every verse... Kinda strange but fun none the less. I don’t have afternoon classes on Tuesday’s so it was great! I was really tired for some reason so I took and nap and then spent the rest of the afternoon lazily working on a presentation for my grammar class. I got to talk to Emily on skype for about 5 minutes…she had a really busy day so I was glad we got a chance to talk! It wouldn’t have been right if I didn’t talk to my twin sister on our birthday! My friend Michelle had asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate. I didn’t really feel like going out to eat because it takes so long in French restaurants and I didn’t want to make everyone spend money. So she came up with the idea of having pizza in the courtyard at the school and I thought it was a good idea. I
had been finishing up some stuff in my room and went down at 7:15 (when we normally have dinner and when our pizza party was planned to start) and was surprised by more than half the CSB/SJU group, other friends from the college and the CSB/SJU program director and her kids!! They proceeded to sing happy birthday to me in the same manner as my grammar class…I think I prefer the normal version but it was certainly a happy birthday version that I won’t forget and will probably only be sung to me in this way on my 21st bday! A few friends had gone to leader price and picked out two chocolate desserts….don’t remember the names, and some cidre for everyone to share. I have to say the cidre was better than any of the wine that I have had sips of before….apparently it had a really low alcohol content and that it probably why I liked it better. Jean brought two tartes, an apple one and a RASPBERRY one!! I was SUPER excited!! I have always loved anything raspberry but had never really had a raspberry tarte until coming to France and I have fallen in love with them! Thanks to the other Laura’s suggestion, Jean got a raspberry tarte. It was amazing and I had a huge piece…but of course I sampled all the other desserts! So there weren’t any candles at leader price so we used matches instead…I had to blow out the “candles” like three times because there was no way to get them all lit at the same time!
We had an optional viewing of the presidential debates at 8 pm and several people had theater practice…I didn’t feel like watching the debates on my birthday so my roommate and I hung out and chatted while finishing off the desserts. Since it was a Tuesday, most people were finishing up homework and going to bed. I didn’t feel like going to sleep yet so I snuggled up in my bed and watched “Les Choristes” on my laptop. It is one of my favorite movies and I had been wanting to watch it for awhile. Part way through the movie, my mom called! She had my grandma on the phone so I got to talk to both of them and my Uncle Dave who happened to walk into my grandma’s house while we were talking!! I think someone else called me too but I can’t remember…
All in all it was a good birthday! People wishing me happy birthday and randomly bursting out in song…it was really nice! Thanks everyone who made my birthday special!
The rest of the week:
Nothing too exciting happened the rest of the week. It was just a normal week filled with homework and nice sunny days (but chilly in the morning and night). I didn’t go anywhere this weekend. It is the first weekend I have spent entirely in Cannes. Yesterday after brunch I went shopping in Cannes with Neva and Michelle. I bought a sweater at a store called Zara and a cool scarf at a random touristy shop. We spent almost 4.5 hours shopping which was more than I was expecting but that’s ok. I wrote a few postcards when I got back and did my grammar homework. After dinner I read for senior seminar and didn’t go to bed until I finished the reading. I had read on Thursday and Friday but still had a lot left last night. Today I went to church, brunch, wrote my essay and now I’m updating my blog. I’m going to go play frisbee now.

PARIS!!!!!!!

2008-09-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

****Warning! This is REALLY LONG**** (It is 6 pages long in microsoft word...there are probably some typos)
Thursday September 18th
We had grammar class like normal in the morning and the hurriedly ate lunch. We had to meet our director at the SNCF train station by 1:40. After lunch Michelle and I rushed up to my room and made a couple croissant and nutella sandwiches for the train ride. The ride was about 5 hours so we knew we would get hungry along the way and didn’t want to pay the outrageous prices of food in the snack bar of the train. We had gone to the grocery store the day before to get the nutella (we got the generic brand but it tasted the same) and croissants. It is really convenient because there is a cheap grocery store and the post office a 10 minute walk from the college! We left the college a little later than we wanted to but since we walked faster than normal, we made it to the train station with time to spare!
The train left at 2:10. I was pretty excited because we were taking the TGV which stands for trains à grand vitesse or high speed train and in 1981 the TGV held the world record for the fastest train. I know that is 27 years ago but I was still excited about! Since we had 5 hours I figured I would get some reading or journaling done during the train ride. However, that plan didn’t last long. About 5 minutes into reading my book I had to stop…I had a headache and wasn’t feeling well. I can’t read in cars but for some reason I expected the train to be better, I guess I was wrong! I think all the trees and hills were passing by the windows too fast for me! So needless to say I didn’t get anymore reading done and either slept or chatted for the remainder of the journey. We arrived in Paris around 7:20. We took the metro from the train station, made a couple changes and headed towards the hotel. I’m glad we did it as a group or I probably would have gotten lost! For the first night I was in a room with 7 other girls! It was pretty crowded but it worked.
Once we got settled in, a bunch of us headed towards the Eiffel Tower. We got off the metro and turned a corner and all of a sudden, there was the Eiffel Tower, glowing blue and sparkling a few blocks in front of us! It was really neat! It just happened to be 9 pm and the Eiffel Tower sparkles every hour on the hour for 10 minutes. It was too late to take the stairs up so we took the elevator. We decided to go up to the top floor right away and then spend some time on the first second level. The line was pretty long but it went fairly quickly so it wasn’t too bad of a wait. The top was neat but I think I like the second floor better. Most people where done surprisingly quickly but Michelle and I didn’t want to leave yet so we stayed while everyone else left to go find some food. There is no way to explain how cool it is to be standing on the Eiffel Tower with the wind blowing in your face and enjoying the lights of Paris at night! It was the perfect first night in Paris activity! We were enjoying ourselves too much to have it cut short. The metro stop was really close and we only had to go through well lit areas so we figured we would be fine on our own. It was pretty chilly and so about half an hour later we decided to head back to our hotel. The rest of the group was waiting for the metro when we got there…apparently they had waited for us for about 10 minutes, not wanting to leave us and then they had been waiting for the metro for the last 15 or 20 minutes. The metro arrived about a minute after we got there, perfect timing! I was tired even though I hadn’t done much and went to bed right away.
Friday September 19th We had to get up for breakfast at 7:15! Since it was so early I just put a sweatshirt on over my PJs and went down to breakfast. We each got half a baguette with nutella, jam, butter and cheese to choose from as a spread, orange juice, coffee/tea/hot chocolate and fruit cocktail…it was the perfect breakfast for me! At 9:00 we headed out for Montmartre as a group. Our director’s ex-husband (who is the co-director of our program and came along because they wanted their two girls to come to France and thought it best to have both parents here) led us on this excursion and told us lots of information along the way. It was cool to learn about the history of the area and Sacre Coeur. After several stops to take pictures or hear facts we finally made it up to the top of Montmartre and had a choice to go into Sacre Coeur/climb the steps to the top or wandering around the village and artist shops. I chose to go up into Sacre Coeur. It was one of the narrowest staircases I think I have ever been in! And there were a TON of stairs up to the top! However I was not disappointed by the view once we got to the top. You could see really far and it was a beautiful day so the sun was shining and it was really nice! We went down and went into the church. It was really beautiful with many intricate mosaics and stain glass windows with bible verses on them. I really liked it. A couple of us sat down to pray for a few minutes and it ended up that mass was about to start! So we got to hear mass in Sacre Coeur! We couldn’t stay for all of it because we had to meet back at the metro stop to go to lunch at noon and mass started at 11:30.
For lunch, we all meet up at a restaurant called Vins des Pyrenees. We had to choose two courses out of the three options. Our choices were raviolis in a cream sauce, some salmon dish and a fruit soup. Since I am not a fish fan I chose the raviolis and fruit soup. The raviolis were AMAZING!!! I can’t even describe how good they were! There were chives and grated cheese on top. The fruit soup was interesting. There was ginger in it and it just didn’t go together in my opinion. Oh well.
We had to meet at the Louvre at 5:40 so we didn’t have a ton of free time in the afternoon. Some people were going to the catacombs so I went with them. I definitely would never have put the catacombs on my to do list but a bunch of people in my group wanted to go so I thought why not go. It was so strange and really shocking actually…It was piles and piles and piles or bones and skulls. It was crazy! I couldn’t believe how far it went on. I was expecting to see a bone here and there but it was walls of bones the whole way!! I’ve never seen anything like it and I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like it again! I can’t remember exactly but I think the catacombs were created because the cemeteries in Paris were over crowed and then there was a plague so sorts and they needed somewhere to bury all the new people so they dug up the old graves and put them underground.
When we were done with the catacombs we headed to the Tuileries to spend a few minutes roaming the gardens before we had to meet at the Louvre. The Louvre is SO huge!! I think we spent about 3 hours in it and were absolutely exhausted! It was a group activity but we got in free. I guess Friday nights it is free for students under 26, thank you ISIC card. It is amazing that there so much art all in one place! The Mona Lisa was disappointing but there were plenty of other amazing painting to make up for it! There is a really HUGE painting that I like on the wall opposite the Mona Lisa, not as famous but much more interesting in my opinion. It was getting late and we were hungry so we made our way back to the area around our hotel and found a gyro stand for dinner. It isn’t like the gyros we eat in the USA but more like the Kebabs we sometimes get at the college. Anyway, it was very tasty. We wandered around while eating and ran into a gelato shop that a family friend suggested…I was too full but it was near our hotel so I was set on coming back. I was tired so I went to bed right when we got back to the hotel.
Saturday September 20th
We met at 9am and went to Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe. We got a mini history lesson by the Obelisque…did you know it was stolen from the Egyptians? I didn’t! We strolled up the Champs Elysees and made our way to the Arc de Triomphe. It was free as one of the “journees du patrimoine” events but surprisingly the line to climb to the top wasn’t long at all! We climbed right up (more stairs, yippee!) and spent so time taking in the magnificent view and wide avenues coming out of the Arc de Triomphe. It was a beautiful day. We then had free time. Michelle, Laura and I decided to go to the Musee D’Orsay. Instead of taking the metro, we took our time and wandered down the Champs Elysees again, stopping at Monoprix to buy some water, and crossed the Seine and found the Musee D’Orsay. We thought the Musee D’Orsay was supposed to be free as well but it was only reduced price which we would have gotten with our student cards anyway. Oh well. It was definitely worth the 5.5 Euros. We went to the top floor first since that is where the Impressionist painting are and everyone told us to make sure we see them. I now know why! I REALLY like them!!!!! I would have to say I think impressionist paintings are now my favorite! There were so many famous and really beautiful painting on this floor! I couldn’t believe it! It was truly amazing! Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne…you could get up so close and see the brush strokes and the layers upon layers of paint that they used. I could have spent the whole afternoon on this floor! We went down and wondered through some sculptures and other paintings. The huge clock at one end of the museum was really cool as well! I would have to say that I liked the Musee D’Orsay better than the Louvre.
We were absolutely famished by this point so we found a café that sold sandwiches and went and sat by the Seine to eat them. It was peaceful and great. Initially we wanted to go to the Musee Rodin as well to see “The Thinker” but we didn’t have enough time. Instead, we went to Trocadero and did some people watching and picture taking with the Eiffel Tower. Then it was time for the boat ride on the Seine. This was another planned group activity. We met at the Pont De L’Alma and took a Bateaux Mouche. It was a nice way to see the city and but got really cold during the last half hour.
Our director didn’t come with us because she had other some things to do. We were to meet her at a restaurant for dinner. We got done with the boat ride half an hour before we were supposed to be at the restaurant. We needed to take the RER to get from where we were to a stop a few blocks from the restaurant. Well, there are two entrances to the RER and we all went in the wrong one. Unlike the metro, we couldn’t switch sides without going out. It took us awhile to figure out we were on the wrong side and then we thought we would need another ticket to get in and there was some craziness while people got tickets from each other. However, most of us were able to use the ticket we had just used to get into the other side so it all worked out in the end. But we were late. Once we got off the RER we speed walked to the restaurant which was farther away from the train stop than we were expecting. It was a Moroccan restaurant but I can’t remember the name. We had a room all to ourselves in the basement. Most of us sat on couch type benches in a U shape and the rest sat at a normal table. It was really comfy but a little crowded. They brought out bread and 4 appetizers for all of us to share-some type of spinach, cooked carrots, and I can’t remember what the other two were. They were really good. For the main course we had a choice between couscous with lamb and veggie and a chicken dish cooked with lemon and onions in this special pot. Since I’ve had couscous I opted for the chicken. It was very tasty but they somehow counted wrong and I didn’t get my food until everyone else was almost done eating!! But it was really good so it was worth the wait. Then it took them FOREVER to bring us our mint tea and Moroccan pastries for dessert. The tea was good but the pastries weren’t the best. The dinner had taken way longer than expected so we all just went back to the hotel and went to bed. Even though it took really long, I’m glad we went because I had never had Moroccan food before.
Sunday September 21st
Versailles! I’m really glad we got to go to Versailles! Our director already had our tickets and I’m glad she did because the line to buy tickets was really long!! We got audio guides with our tickets which was really nice! I listened to mine in French J We first went through the palace part. I started out with Michelle and Neva and we shortly met up with two guys from our group. However, by the time we got done with the first section, we had lost each other. I had no idea where anyone had gone. We were more or less together since we were all listening to the audio guides but none the less, I had no idea where anyone was. So I just continued on. The second part was WAY more crowded than the first! The buildings were really cool with all the paintings, old furniture and walls that looked like they were carpeted! At one point during the second section I ran into one of the guys from our group but the crowds were so huge (reduced price here too due to the “journees du patrimoine” so there were a ton of people!). I didn’t spend as much time in each room since it was all starting to look the same. I found the famous hall our mirrors and wasn’t all too impressed. Don’t get me wrong, the ceilings were ornately painted and amazing chandeliers but it didn’t impress me as much as I was expecting…there were other rooms that I like better. I was starting to get worried that I would spend the whole day along since we had the whole day free, we could leave Versailles when we wanted and didn’t have any group activities planned for the evening! I wasn’t in the mood for tackling Paris on my own so I was disappointed. Magically when I was returning my audio guide, I saw a bunch of people from my group leaving the gift shop! Perfect! They were heading out to get some lunch. We were all given money to buy lunch with since it would have been hard to meet up as a group to go eat together. We ventured into the town and found a small restaurant. I had a croque Madame…basically a grilled ham and cheese with an egg on top. It was kinda burnt on one side but still pretty good. After lunch, we went back to the palace but didn’t go inside. We walked around to see the gardens. You really couldn’t see much without buying a ticket to go into the gardens. I really wanted to see the gardens so I as sad because everyone was saying that they wanted to go back to Paris to do this or that. I ran off to take a few pictures and when I went back to the group magically the two guys had decided they wanted to stay and go into the gardens!! I was so excited! Like I said before, I didn’t want to be left by myself for the rest of the day so I wasn’t going to stay in the gardens if everyone else went back to Paris even though I really wanted to. Now I didn’t have to! And 3 is a good number too, one thing I learned on this trip is that it is hard to do things as a large group!! I wasn’t disappointed that I stayed either! The immensity of the gardens was incredible! Rows and rows of hedges, large expanses of green grass, trees and more trees and some pretty flower beds! There were a bunch of fountains as well. The neat thing about the fountains is that they were completely powered by gravity, no electricity. They were only on from 3:30-5:30. We sat at the edge of the biggest fountain and watched it turn on. There were some ducks and a swan swimming around the fountain before it turned on. This may seem odd but I actually really enjoyed watching the swan and ducks while we were waiting for the fountain to turn on. We took a 20 minutes rest on one of the lawns before strolling through the orangerie and headed back to Paris.
We had planned to meet some people at Sacre Coeur at 6:30. We got off at the metro stop close to Sacre Coeur. There were a bunch of people waiting to take an elevator out…we had never seen an elevator in the metro stations before and decided to take the stairs out since they were right there. Well, they were NEVER ENDING stairs and after we got to the top understood why everyone was waiting for the elevator. We didn’t know exactly where we were but we knew Sacre Coeur was at the top of the hill and we weren’t so we climbed up about 3 more flights of stairs and up streets until we found it. The steps were really crowded but we managed to find 4 friends and after waiting awhile figured that was everyone who was coming. Turns out Michelle and Neva were there at the exact same time too but they didn’t know about the planned meeting there and we didn’t see them. We looked at some shops and paintings and then decided to find the Moulin Rouge while it was still light out. We knew it was in the general Montmartre area but didn’t know where. We asked someone for directions and they said it was down the hill and to the right….well we were walking for a while and didn’t see it so we asked for directions again to make sure we were going in the right way. We were on the right track but it was just farther away than we expected….we ended up asking for directions one more time…we were never going the wrong way, it just felt like we should have been there already. We finally found it, took pictures and hoped on the metro to get dinner near our hotel. We went into a cool looking church for about 2 mintues before we had to leave…it was closing for the night. We got gyros again. Since some people were getting crepes, another girl and I went back to the gelato shop (Amorino) I had seen a few days ago. I got dark chocolate and raspberry. Let’s just say I think it was THE BEST ICE CREAM (well, gelato, but same idea) I HAVE EVER HAD!!! It was worth every cent (even with the bad exchange rate)!! I was tired but since it was our last night I didn’t want to go to bed. Bad at the hotel I hung out with some friends and then people decided they were going out. I didn’t part take in the taking an hour to decide what to wear and how to do my hair but went out with them anyway. We ended up going to a salsa bar and there were only like 5 other people in the bar but that was fine. It was pretty fun.
Monday September 22nd
Last morning in Paris! We had to be back at the hotel at 12:15 to leave so we didn’t have too much time. I got up earlier than my roommates, ate breakfast and headed out by myself, which is what I wanted to do. I hadn’t seen the Centre Pompidou yet and I really wanted to. It was near our hotel so I just walked. It was a perfect morning! Clear and slightly crisp! It was so fun walked along with the people going to work and the other students heading off to school. The Centre Pompidou doesn’t open until 11 am so I wasn’t able to go inside but that’s ok. There was a neat fountain right across from it and I spent some time there and then circled the Centre Pompidou and looked in the windows…all I could see was some cool architecture models on the ground floor. I hadn’t done any shopping yet so I set out on a mission to get some quality shopping in in the next hour and a half. I wandered down a random street in the direction of the hotel and found a really cool and cheap bookstore. I got a book on Monet and a Mega Kakuro puzzle book. I had never seen this puzzle before but it is kind of like a sudoko and kind of like a crossword puzzle and the book of 940 puzzles only cost 2.5 euros so I got it since it looked like fun and I figured it would be good for me so my math brain doesn’t turn to mush not having any math classes this semester. I started one while waiting for the TGV to start but had to stop a few minutes later and haven’t had time to work on it again. They are challenging but fun! I stopped by Notre Dame on my shopping adventure since it was on my way. I sat on the edge of the Seine and just spent some time looking at the detail of one side. My morning was going perfectly!! The artists were just opening up their stands along the river and I spent a bunch of time browsing through their art. I got a poster but decided to hold off on the paintings since I had seen them for cheaper. I was running out of time so I went to a nearby area with a ton of little shops. There I found almost everything I was looking for including the perfect painting for cheaper than the artist stands along the river! I was hungry and only had 15 minutes before I needed to be back at the hotel so I stopped at a little pastry shop and got an amazing looking raspberry tart and something for the train ride. The train ride back was uneventful and I just slept or talked. We made it back to the college in time for dinner but the walk from the train station back to the college felt SOOO long. We were all tired and hungry. My roommate was really excited to see me and didn’t stop talking throughout all of dinner.
This week:
I already told you about my Cinema class. On Thursday I started French Civilization. The prof had a list of 13 names but for some reason 25 people showed up to the class. The room was crowded since it wasn’t made for that many people but she is going to figure out what went wrong for class tomorrow. Besides the large number of people, the class seemed pretty good. We talked about French schools last time…I had learned some of the information before but there was definitely new information too. We had a Mexican Fiesta night for dinner! It was really good but the line was long (it was a buffet instead of each table getting a platter of food like normal) and we were all late to senior seminar!
On Friday I only had grammar and then I was free! I went into town and window shopped. I stopped at Monoprix for a mailing envelope to mail Emily’s birthday gift in J. When I went in, I noticed there were some dark clouds coming but I thought the rain would hold off until I got back to the college but I was wrong! It was raining by the time I got out of Monoprix! Now I was 30 minutes from the college without an umbrella! Darn! I walked as fast as I could to the post office and then back to the college. The rain felt kinda good and I was soaked by the time I got back.

2008-09-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it has been a week since my last blog! I had a great weekend in Paris but I am too busy at the moment to blog about that. I hope to update you all on my adventures in Paris on Friday. I had 7.5 hours of class today and I still have to write an essay and do my grammar homework. I am exhausted from my classes and the weekend in Paris so it is going to be difficult to stay awake long enough write an essay and do my hw.

We started new grammar classes yesterday. It was everyone from my old class plus 3 new people and a new prof. The new prof is a lot more strict and orderly than our other prof. The other Laura from the CSB/SJU group is in my class, like last month. Our last prof was ok with it and just would say Laura Buggy or Laura Beach when calling on one of us. However, the new prof things that we will get confused and wouldn't accept us to both go by Laura. So she asked if we had middle names...well of course we do. She liked my middle name (I like it too :)), Jacqueline, so for the next month, I am now Jacqueline.

Today I had my first cinema class. It was pretty intense. It was a lot more dense than the grammar class and it was 3.5 hours long. The prof doesn't know any English (but he knows Latin, Greek and German) and there are only 3 of us in the class! It will be interesting but challenging at the same time! He talks pretty fast and doesn't write much on the board. It is hard to take notes since not much is written on the board and it is so much new information! So I was really tired after having 3 hours of grammar and then 3.5 hours of cinema. But I wasn't done yet. I had to go directly from cinema to the theater because we had our first meeting for the theater class...yep, I'm going to be in a play. I don't have a part yet because the director of the college, who writes and directs the plays has only written 2 scenes and about half the people still need a role. And now, here I am. Luckily dinner was only an hour after the theater meeting started so it only lasted an hour. From now on I will have 6.75 hours of class on Mondays, 3 hours on Tuesdays, 7.5 on Wednesdays, 6.75 on Thursdays and 3 on Fridays....I'm not sure how I am going to survive! I am already tired after 2 days of class this week (we were in Paris on Monday). Well, I better start my essay and homework! Here are a few preview pictures from Paris.

The best ice cream I have ever had!

Sacre Coeur

Versaille Gardens!

At the Louvre!